BAGHDAD, 24 December 2005 — US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on a visit to Baghdad yesterday that the United States will withdraw some of its combat forces from Iraq early next year.
Rumsfeld’s announcement means the number of US troops will drop back under the level of 138,000 for the first time since April 2004, though the defense secretary added that troop levels would vary as their mission changed and could even still go up.
“The size and composition of US forces will continue to fluctuate as commanders continue to shift focus from combat to supporting and training the Iraqi security forces.
“This will include increases in the number of US forces involved in transition teams, intelligence support and logistics, to assist the Iraqi security forces in continuing to assume increasing responsibility for the security of the country,” he said.
Rumsfeld, who arrived in the country from Afghanistan on Thursday, held talks with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari yesterday after a brief morning side trip to neighboring Jordan to inspect a training facility for Iraqi security forces.
The defense secretary also alluded to further reductions during the course of the year.
“We anticipate future coalition force-level discussions at some point in 2006, after the new Iraqi government is in place and is prepared to discuss the future,” he added.
President Talabani yesterday told reporters he was trying to help set up “a government of national unity” by convening talks amongst various political factions in the wake of the general elections. But the likely difficulty of forming the new coalition government was highlighted when several thousand Sunni demonstrators took to the streets of several Iraqi cities yesterday alleging widescale electoral fraud by the ruling Shiite-based religious parties.
Early election results suggested these Shiite parties could win a majority in Parliament.
Several parties, including the main Sunni-Arab coalition, have threatened to boycott the new Parliament if the electoral commission fails to throw out some of the tainted election results.
Meanwhile, six Sudanese, including a diplomat, were reported kidnapped in the strife-torn country.
Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Mohammad Ibrahim told Al-Jazeera television that he did not know who had kidnapped the six Sudanese nationals, including embassy Second Secretary Abdel Monam Al-Dur and four local staffers, and appealed for their immediate release.
In the latest insurgent strike, gunmen yesterday attacked an army checkpoint in Odhaim, near the restive city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, killing eight soldiers and wounding 17, police said. The early morning attack was the bloodiest since the general elections.
Not far from Baquba, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a Shiite mosque killing four worshippers and injuring eight in the town of Baladruz.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, two soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, bringing the toll of US military killed since the invasion to 2,163.
An Iraqi was also killed in Baghdad and another wounded in a shooting in the southern neighborhood of Dura, while a police colonel was wounded by gunmen in the west of the city.
