BAGHDAD, 17 May 2004 — US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that US-led forces would remain in Iraq “for a considerable period” as the country’s interior minister said it was unlikely a new interim government would ask them to leave.
In a spate of television interviews, Powell defended the planned handover on June 30 and said the United States would respect the wishes of the new Iraqi government.
“We will have to accept what the Iraqi people decide upon,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.
In an interview with Fox television, Powell said that US-led forces would have to remain in Iraq over the long term.
“They need our troops there for some considerable period of time in the future... so they can have free and open and fair elections.”
“There will be a period of time, some considerable period of time, before we can see conditions of security that can be placed totally into the hands of Iraqi security forces,” Powell said.
“We expect that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and the minister of defense and the generals working within the Ministry of Defense will have command and control over their troops,” he said.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Samir Sumaidy said the US-led troops should be allowed to tackle security threats without explicit permission each time.
“We cannot have a situation where every time there is a threat to security we go through the political and bureaucratic procedure of getting approvals,” Sumaidy said in an interview.
The extent of US control over security has cast doubt on how much power the current US-backed administration will cede to an unelected Iraqi government due to take over on June 30.
“But we also expect that in the interest of the unity of command and to make sure there is no confusion as to what we’re doing with respect to security, they will put those troops under the direction of the multinational force commander, who will be an American.”
Attacks on Iraqis seen as collaborators continued yesterday. Fighters fired on a minibus in Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women who were employees of the coalition, and assailants in a city south of the capital killed a translator for the coalition and critically injured another. Elsewhere a US soldier died in a bomb blast, the military said.
US tanks made a brief incursion into Karbala. The sudden appearance of some 15 tanks near the Imam Abbas and Imam Hussein shrines provoked anger among hundreds of people. The tanks left as suddenly as they appeared.
