Iraqi Defence Minister: "The days of terrorism are over"

Jun 28, 2009, 13:47 GMT

Baghdad - Two days ahead of the June 30 deadline for US troops to leave Iraqi cities and towns, Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel- Qadir al-Ubaidi on Sunday struck a defiant tone.

'The days of terrorism are over,' al-Ubaidi said in remarks carried on Iraqi state television. 'I challenge terrorists to attack any police station. We are now the stronger side.

'We must cooperate and remain unified and defiant in order to uproot terrorism from the country,' the defence minister said.

The Iraqi government says the US military has handed over control of 95 per cent of their installations in urban areas to Iraqi forces, and that Iraqi troops will take control of the rest over the coming days.

The Iraqi military says it will meet the US withdrawal with its biggest deployment of troops and policemen in the six years since the US-led invasion of the country.

Some 120,000 additional soldiers and police will be deployed to Baghdad alone, and thousands of others will be deployed to other cities.

In a show of force, Iraqi security forces on Sunday arrested 65 suspected insurgents in the predominantly Sunni area of al-Duwaila, roughly 90 kilometres north of Baghdad, police there told the German Press Agency dpa.

The arrests followed two attacks in the area over the past two days. In one case, militants attacked a US military patrol. In the other, they killed an Iraqi civilian by detonating a sticky bomb attached to his car, police said, without elaborating.

US soldiers will continue to patrol the most conflict-ridden districts of the country outside the cities at the invitation of the Iraqi government.

A few will remain in Iraqi cities in an advisory capacity, and others will continue to guard Iraq's borders, US Brigadier General Steve Lanza told Baghdad's al-Madah newspaper.

'Defending Iraq's borders from any foreign or regional aggression will remain part of the US troops' duties until Iraqi military capabilities are sufficient to fully protect the country's borders,' he said.

The remaining US troops will offer logistical and military support at the request of the Iraqi government, but 'will have the right to answer any attack on its posts outside Iraqi cities without referring to the Iraqi government,' he added.

The area around the violence-prone, northern Iraqi city of Mosul is one area where the US soldiers will stay.

The area, one of the most ethnically diverse in the country, remains the subject of dispute between the new Arab nationalist local government in Mosul and Kurdish authorities.

Sunni and minority politicians in the district on Sunday accused Kurdish parties of fomenting strife in the area and attempting to annex land to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Athil al-Najifi, the governor of the province, insisted that all Kurdish paramilitary fighters must leave Mosul.

'All the troops in Mosul must be under the central government's command,' he told dpa. 'Any other armed groups loyal to other parties are not allowed to stay within the borders of Mosul.'

Hanin Qadu, a member of parliament representing the northern Iraqi Shabak minority, accused the Kurds of being responsible for the 'deterioration of security situation in the province.'

'The Kurds are attempting to feed an armed ethnic struggle among the Mosul population. The Kurdish (militias) must withdraw from Mosul.

'The central government should intervene before a civil war erupts in the province, with terrible effect for the entire country,' he saids

Iraq has suffered a wave of attacks ahead of the June 30 deadline.

On Friday, a bomb in a central Baghdad motorcycle market killed at least 19 people and wounded 47 more.

That attack followed a devastating blast in a crowded market in Sadr City that left 74 dead and hundreds more wounded on Wednesday, and a wave of lethal bombings across the capital that left at least 15 people dead and 72 wounded in four attacks on Monday.

Al-Ubaidi on Sunday called those attacks 'terrorism ... of the most malicious sort,' and 'an attempt by the terrorists to prove that they still exist and are able to operate after the defeat they met in a number of blows from security.'