WASHINGTON, Sept 24: The Pentagon may be forced in coming weeks to alert thousands of additional National Guard and Reserve troops they may be needed for duty in Iraq if other countries do not provide a third multinational division to serve there, a senior US general said on Wednesday.

Marine Corps Gen Peter Pace cautioned that any decision on additional US active duty or part-time troops to send to Iraq would depend on the security situation and contributions from Iraqi forces and troops from other countries.

But “we need to be making decisions about alerting Reservists over the next four to six weeks,” Pace, the vice chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in a breakfast interview.

“I would think that by around the end of October, the beginning of November, we should be alerting those forces that may need to be called up ... to relieve or be prepared to relieve if we don’t have specificity by then on a third coalition division,” the general said.

The United States currently has about 130,000 troops in Iraq. There are two other multinational divisions there headed by Britain and Poland.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the US military’s Central Command, reiterated at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that the United States was pressing for contributions for a third international division in order to cut the US military presence in Iraq by as many as 15,000.

Abizaid said no final decision had been made on the US troop level next year.

“There are many countries out there talking about it

(contributing troops), and we have every hope that that will happen,” General Pace told reporters.—Reuters