BAGHDAD, 20 June 2006 — US coalition troops are to quit the southern Iraqi province of Muthanna next month, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki announced yesterday, in the first such handover to the fledgling Iraqi security forces. “We have a plan to transfer security from coalition troops to local forces and the first governorate where it will take place is the province of Al-Muthanna next month,” Maliki told reporters. Based on the city of Samawa, the province is patrolled by 400 Australian and 250 British troops.
Some 600 Japanese service personnel are deployed on humanitarian duties in the province on Tokyo’s first military mission in a country where hostilities are under way since World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Sunday that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would probably announce the pullout of the Japanese troops before a meeting with US President George W. Bush later this month.
Japan yesterday pledged to keep supporting Iraq after its historic troop mission ends, offering loans to build bridges and roads in Samawa. Koizumi said “Japan will continue considering and carrying out what it can do for the stability of Iraq.” British-led troops are to continue patrolling the southern provinces of Maysan and Basra. On an unannounced visit to Baghdad yesterday, British Defense Minister Des Browne called for a major security crackdown in Basra, Iraq’s main southern city, along the lines of a similar operation under way in the capital.
“I am here to discuss an equivalent plan for security in Basra,” Browne told a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. “That new security plan has a long-term aim to hand over security to Iraqi army and police, accepting that there have to be reforms — particularly to the aspect of the police service,” he said.
The Iraqi prime minister imposed a massive security clampdown in Baghdad nearly a week ago, which has seen tens of thousands of US and Iraqi troops patrolling the streets in a bid to halt spiraling sectarian violence. Basra too has seen mounting unrest in recent weeks, much of it blamed on Shiite militiamen.
On Friday, a Sunni prayer leader was shot dead, prompting the main Sunni clerics’ organization to close all Sunni mosques in Basra except one. On May 31, Maliki declared a monthlong state of emergency in Basra in response to the violence. Some 8,000 British troops are currently deployed in southern Iraq, most of them in Basra.
In Baghdad, insurgent attacks continued yesterday, despite the extra security. Four people were killed and eight wounded when a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded in the Al-Waziriyah neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said.
