UNITED NATIONS, Sept 15: Home-grown units could replace some of the foreign troops in Iraq by the end of this month, but no timetable exists for a pullout of US-led forces, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Thursday.

Mr Talabani caused controversy last week when he first told the Washington Post the United States could withdraw as many as 50,000 troops by the end of the year and then aligned himself with President George W. Bush’s view that a withdrawal deadline would only fan the insurgency.

Asked about the 530 Danish troops in Iraq, Talabani said, “I think, we will be able at the end of this month to replace many units from the allied forces, but we must have a common agreement between your government and our government for the timetable of the removal forces.”

Mr Talabani repeated that Iraq did not want to set a timetable on any major withdrawals.

“We don’t want to encourage the terrorists so they can oblige you or us to leave under the threat,” he told a group of Danish reporters at the United Nations World Summit.

Nearly 1,900 U.S. troops have been killed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Close to 141,000 American troops are there and the U.S. military plans to increase this by up to 2,000 troops before an Oct. 15 referendum on the country’s new constitution.

Talabani dismissed suggestions, supported by some analysts, that Iraq’s mixed population of Kurds and Sunni and Shia Muslim Arabs were slipping towards civil war.

“We have no war among Iraqis,” Talabani said. “We have some thousands criminals who came from outside of the country, fighting against our people, trying to kill civilians and innocent people.”

A Kurd who led rebels fighting the forces of Saddam Hussein, Talabani emphasized the semi-independence of the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War and then switched briefly from Arabic to Kurdish.

The Kurdish provinces, he said, could serve “as a model for democratic experience, rehabilitation and economic, cultural and social development.”

—Reuters