Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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Gates: Iraqis ‘empowered’
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, center, visits troops from the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division’s Advise and Assist Mission upon his arrival yesterday at a military base in Tallil, Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a visit to Iraq yesterday that the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from urban bases was paying off as Iraqi forces assumed the lead for the fragile security. Gates is expected to touch on possible arms sales during his visit and try to help bridge a deep divide between ethnic Kurds and Arabs that many fear may undermine security gains. “Nobody’s the boss or the occupier, or however you want to put it. But there’s a real sense of empowerment by the Iraqis,”
“Less than a month into it, I’m really heartened.” Gates
Gates said of U.S.-Iraqi cooperation following the June 30 deadline for pulling U.S. combat troops out of city bases. The withdrawal, a milestone in the plan to pull out all U.S. troops of Iraq by the end of 2011, raised fears among some Iraqis
that untested local forces would not be able to keep Iraq from sliding back into greater bloodshed. “Less than a month into it, I’m really heartened,” Gates told reporters after addressing U.S. troops at the dusty, sun-baked Tallil air base on a sweltering summer day. He said Iraq’s security situation was “amazingly different” to that of his first visit to Iraq as U.S. defense chief in December 2006, at the height of the sectarian bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis since the 2003 invasion. REUTERS
Israeli peace ‘making progress’
JERUSALEM.
U.S. envoy George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not agree on a Jewish settlement freeze in talks yesterday but said negotiations were advancing. “We are making progress,” Netanyahu told reporters. “I think we held a very important and productive talk and we will continue with the effort which, I believe, in the end will succeed in advancing peace and security between us and our Palestinian neighbors and the region in general.”
Netanyahu
After more than two hours of talks with Netanyahu, Mitchell told re-
porters: “We have made good progress.” Mitchell said he looked forward to continuing discussions with Netanyahu and moving toward a “comprehensive peace” envisioned by President Barack Obama. He did not say when he would next meet the Israeli leader. Obama’s demand, in line with a 2003 peace plan, to freeze Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem has met stiff resistance from Netanyahu, the most serious rift in U.S.-Israeli relations in a decade.
REUTERS