November 16, 2007	Friday	Ziqa’ad 05, 1428

BAGHDAD, Nov 15: Violence has plummeted in Basra and Iraq’s security forces are in full control, a British general said on Thursday, a month before a formal handover of the southern oil city to Iraqi authority.

“I’m confident the current level of violence is sufficient for the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to handle,” Major General Graham Binns, head of the coalition forces in south-eastern Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad.

He had no doubt, he said, that Iraq would be ready to take over security in the entire southern province of Basra from the British military on schedule in mid-December. “I wouldn’t have recommended PIC (Provisional Iraqi Control) if I was not confident,” he said, adding however, that the handover was not without risk as violence had not dropped off entirely.

“Is there risk? Yes. But you don’t make progress unless you take risks,” he said.

“In May, June and July the brigades that we had in Basra were standing toe to toe with the militias and fighting some of the most intense tactical battles that we’ve had to fight during the four years that we’ve been here.

“We were taking casualties, they were taking casualties ... 90 per cent of the violence was directed at us.” The turnaround in the violence, said Binns, came when the last British troops early September left their headquarters at Basra Palace, a sumptuous former residence of Saddam Hussein in the heart of the city, and joined their colleagues at a nearby air base.

The overall number of attacks against the security forces — British and Iraqi — in Basra now was about one-tenth of what it was in August, said Binns.—AFP