Defense Secretary Gates: Pause May Be Needed in Troop Pullouts from Iraq

11 February 2008 -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says there may need to be a "pause" in troop reductions in Iraq once the initial pullouts are complete in July.

Gates spoke Monday in Baghdad, during a previously unannounced visit to discuss troop reductions with top American military officials.

He said a recent decline in violence means the Iraqi people have an opportunity to forge a better, more secure, and more prosperous future. He also said Iraq's leaders seem to have become energized in recent weeks to work on national reconciliation -- but he cautioned that the situation remains fragile.

Sunday, some 50 people were killed in violence across Iraq. In one of the deadliest incidents in weeks, a suicide car bomber killed at least 25 people at a checkpoint near the central Iraq town of Balad.

Farther north, near the city of Mosul, gunmen attacked two villages, triggering battles with neighborhood militias that killed at least 21 people. The U.S. military says 10 insurgents and five U.S.-allied militiamen died, and local militia leader Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba says six civilians also were killed. Four other civilians were killed near Mosul when police and members of an Iraqi group that opposes al-Qaida opened fire on a tanker truck heading toward their checkpoint.

U.S. commanders say Mosul is the last major urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq. Many insurgents were driven north by U.S.-led offensives in Baghdad and surrounding areas last year.

The U.S. military says documents captured from leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq last November show the group has been weakened in several parts of the country. Military officials said Sunday that a letter written by a senior al-Qaida emir gives a pessimistic account of the group's prospects in western Iraq's Anbar province.

Troops also found the diary of an al-Qaida in Iraq leader in a raid near Balad. U.S. officials say the author wrote that American-backed neighborhood watch groups have greatly restricted al-Qaida activities in the area. However, a senior U.S. spokesman, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, says the documents do not signal that al-Qaida has been defeated across Iraq.

Source: VOA News

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