BAGHDAD, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Growing impatience with the slow pace of work to improve basic services like electricity and water could threaten security gains in Iraq's Anbar province, a former al Qaeda stronghold, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
With Iraq's Shi'ite-led government deadlocked on the 2008 budget and other major laws, U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith said that Iraq needed to focus on improving the lives of Sunni Arabs to take advantage of security gains.
"What's necessary to come behind security are essential services ... part of that is through the central government's distribution of funds into the provinces," Smith told reporters.
"There will clearly be impatience with the level of support when you consider just how far many of these areas need to come in terms of employment and so forth," he said when asked if disaffected Sunni Arabs policing their own neighbourhoods could become militias.
Millions of Baghdad residents still receive only fitful supplies of water and electricity after sectarian fighting and a Sunni Arab-led insurgency killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and devastated infrastructure.
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