BAGHDAD/TEHRAN, 13 September 2006 — The commander of the US Marine force in Iraq yesterday denied his troops had lost control of the vast province they patrol, after newspapers reported his intelligence chief had written a bleak report. A division led by US Marines has faced some of the highest casualty rates in Iraq patrolling the vast desert of Anbar, Iraq’s biggest province and a center of the Sunni insurgency.
The Washington Post reported that officials who have seen a study by the Marines’ top intelligence officer in Iraq say he described the situation in the province as lost. Iraq’s Shiite-led government holds no sway there and the strongest political movement is the Iraq branch of Al-Qaeda, it concluded. The Post said it was the first time a senior US officer had filed such a pessimistic assessment from Iraq, and described it as having had an impact among policy-makers in Washington. But Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, said the press reports “fail to accurately capture the entirety and complexity” of the situation in Anbar.
“The classified assessment, which has been referred to in these reports, was intended to focus on the causes of the insurgency. It was not intended to address the positive effects coalition and Iraqi forces have achieved on the security environment over the past years,” he said in a statement.Meanwhile, I ran offered yesterday to help establish security and stability in Iraq after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki held talks in Tehran on his first official visit to the Islamic Republic. Maliki’s aides said he would tell fellow Shiite Islamist leaders in Iran that Tehran should not interfere in Iraqi affairs, a message likely to please Washington which accuses Iran of backing militants fighting US troops in Iraq.
But Maliki and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave few details about their talks yesterday, except to say that the two neighbors which fought a bloody war in the 1980s had agreed to cooperate in political, economic and security fields.
“We will give our full assistance to the Iraqi government to establish security in (Iraq). Strengthening security in Iraq means strengthening security and stability in the region,” Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference after their meeting in Tehran.
