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U.S. Expects Long-Term Troop Stay in Iraq


By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON - American officials say U.S. forces will be needed in Iraq (news - web sites) long after a sovereign government is restored this summer, but they have yet to work out the terms of a continued presence.

Senior Pentagon officials said Thursday they were confident that the Iraqis, once given political control, would agree U.S. troops should stay. But some outside the government question whether that would hold true once an elected Iraqi government took over.

Anthony Cordesman, a close observer of the Iraq situation as a strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that if political control was turned over on July 1 to an Iraqi body that is not elected, it likely would align itself with U.S. objectives and therefore welcome a continued U.S. military presence. But once elections were held, the U.S. role would be in doubt, he said.

If the new Iraqi government decided it wanted American forces to leave, "We would certainly be obligated to leave, under international law," Cordesman said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita, told reporters at the Pentagon that there is a "fairly confident belief" that most Iraqis accept the U.S. view that American troops will be needed over the long haul to ensure a stable transition to democracy.

The basis for a continued U.S. military presence under the authority of a transitional Iraqi government is "being developed," Di Rita said without elaborating.

"I think there's a fairly comfortable understanding that the coalition has a lot to offer with respect to continued security in Iraq," Di Rita said, and "that people in Iraq understand that (and) want the coalition to continue to be involved in security in some way."

Di Rita did not define the roles that U.S. troops would play once the occupation ended. Other officials have said troops will be needed to guide the development of Iraqi internal security forces as well as build an Iraqi army that is capable of defending against external threats.

U.S. troops also will be engaged in combat as long as the insurgency remains active.

The legal basis for U.S. troops operating in any foreign country is normally spelled out in a legal arrangement called a status of forces agreement, which defines legal protections for U.S. troops accused of crimes in that country. Without it, U.S. troops in Iraq would be subject to local Iraqi law, once the U.S. occupation authority is ended and a government is restored.

"That would be untenable," Cordesman said.

At this point it is unclear whether American authorities can work out such a complex legal agreement by June 30, when some form of transitional Iraqi government is due to take control.

Cordesman said U.S. officials at one time had hoped to have such an agreement worked out by this month, but that proved impossible because "there is no clear government to work with."

The U.S. plan is to gradually move responsibility for security into the hands of the Iraqis, thereby reducing the U.S. military's role. But senior officials say that process will take many months, if not years.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Bush administration has a plan to accelerate the building of viable Iraqi security forces, which now number over 200,000 and include police, border guards, a civil defense corps and guards for certain key facilities.

"We're going to focus on Iraqi security forces like we've never really focused on them before, and you'll see some of that come out in the next week or so as we try to ensure we have unity of effort on the equipping and training and mentoring of Iraqi security forces," he said.

Even while the Bush administration works toward its goal of restoring Iraqi sovereignty by July 1, U.S. troops are dying at a rate of more than one a day. They are opposed by an insurgency that U.S. commanders say is aimed at preventing a stable Iraqi government from taking root.

Myers said he could not estimate with confidence how long U.S. troops will be needed in Iraq.

"I really do believe it's unknowable," he said. "If I gave a good professional estimate, then that would be a standard that people would point to and, knowing that we can't know it perfectly, we'd get hammered."

For planning purposes, the Army is assuming it will have to keep roughly 100,000 troops in Iraq for at least another two years, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told Congress recently.