BAGHDAD, Dec 6: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Baghdad on Saturday that a programme to train and deploy Iraqi security forces should be accelerated as Washington works to return sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
Mr Rumsfeld was speaking after arriving in Baghdad from the northern oil city of Kirkuk, where he began a first-hand appraisal of political and military conditions in Iraq.
He said he would like to accelerate the recruitment, training and deployment of Iraqis in various security forces.
“I am convinced that the direction that we set from the outset is the right one and that is being executed exceedingly well, and that the security circumstances in the country will be passed over time to Iraqi security forces of various types, and that they will be able to do it,” he told reporters. Mr Rumsfeld flew into Baghdad one day after a street bombing in the Iraqi capital killed one US soldier and four Iraqis.
Since Mr Rumsfeld’s last visit to Iraq in September, the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation has escalated.
In response, the United States wants to return sovereignty to the Iraqi people at a quicker pace and has built up the number of trained Iraqi security personnel to the point that they now outnumber the 130,000 US troops in the country.
In Kirkuk, the defence secretary ate breakfast with soldiers at an airbase cafeteria at a table surrounded by troops and a Christmas tree. He arrived in Kirkuk in rain just after daybreak aboard a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane from Georgia.
Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the US Fourth Infantry Division, told Mr Rumsfeld in Kirkuk that more Iraqis were coming forward with better intelligence tips against guerillas.—Reuters
