US sends more military police to Iraq; American Commander calls for political solution

BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
March 8, 2007

The United States is sending an additional 2,200 military police to Iraq to support Baghdad’s security crackdown.

The extra forces are in addition to the 21,500 combat troops already committed to the Baghdad security plan and the 2,400 troops earmarked to support them, according to United Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates said it was not surprising that Sunni insurgents have launched increased attacks in recent days. “I think that we expected that there would be in the short term an increase in violence as the surge began to make itself felt,” he said.

According to him, there are other “very preliminary positive signs” that the Baghdad security plan is working.

Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, the United States’ commander in Iraq, has said US and Iraqi security forces cannot solve the problem of violence in Iraq without political action and reconciliation with some militant groups.

General Petraeus, in his first news conference in Baghdad, on Thursday, since he took command in February 2007, said he saw no immediate need to request more US troops, but reinforcements already requested would likely stay “well beyond the summer.”

“There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency of Iraq,” General Petraeus asserted. “Military action is necessary to help improve security, but it is not sufficient.”

He said political progress would require talking to and reconciling with “some of those who have felt the new Iraq did not have a place for them.” A key challenge for the Shi’ite-led government of Nuri al-Maliki is to identify those militant groups who are “reconcilable” and to bring them into the political process.

Groups such as al-Qaeda are stepping up their attacks to provoke more violence and stop that process, General Petraeus said.

According to him, a US-backed Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad would take months and “sensational attacks” would continue, but there had already been encouraging signs of progress, especially a drop in sectarian killings.

There are about 140,000 US troops already fighting in Iraq, where sectarian violence has thwarted American efforts to bring the four-year-old war to a close.

Democratic leaders in the US Congress are pushing for a time-table for the withdrawal of troops after widespread anger at the war handed them victory in the mid-term elections in November 2006.

US President George W Bush is sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq, mostly to Baghdad.

In all, 3,188 US soldiers have died since the 2003 invasion.