Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Hopes of early handover to Iraqis unrealistic

LONDON (AFP) - Iraq's police force is not likely to be ready to take over responsibility for security in the country within a year, The Times reported citing unnamed American soldiers and officials in Baghdad.


The report comes a day after Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh said that nearly half of the country's provinces will be under Iraqi control by the end of this year, and a British official said at the weekend that Iraqi soldiers and police will be ready to take over security from coalition troops within a year.

"Iraqis are on their own timetable," an unidentified high-ranking American officer overseeing police training in the Iraqi capital told The Times.

"They are fighting a war, but I'm not always sure they are fighting it. We train them to do checkpoints, patrols, cordon and knock searches, but it fails in the execution.

"There's probably twenty of them at a checkpoint but you'll only see three actually working it," he said.

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