IRAN: Members of Iranian Parliament react to Iraq report

The United States should begin to withdraw its forces from combat in Iraq and launch a diplomatic push, including Iran and Syria, to prevent "a slide toward chaos" in the country, a high-level panel recommended on Wednesday (December 6). The report was received with optimism in Iran. "I think Iran and Syria can play important role for the peace and security in not only Iraq, but in the Middle East, they are two important countries in this area. and they (Iran-Syria) are neighbours of Iraq. They have good relations with Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government.", said Iranian member of Parliament Mahmoud Mohammadi. "The affairs of Iraqi people should be in the hands of the Iraqis and in the second step the countries the state that could help Iraqis, would be Syria and Iranian people as a neighbours of Iraqis.", said another Parliament member Elham Aminzadeh. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group also pushed Washington to reduce its political, military or economic support for Iraq if its government fails to advance security and national reconciliation in the country, where sectarian violence kills scores of people every day. It also called for the Bush administration to engage with Iran and Syria, whom U.S. officials accuse of formenting the insurgency in Iraq, and to press for a "comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace" to settle the festering conflict. U.S. President George W. Bush said he would take the much-anticipated report "very seriously" after he met the group but the White House has made clear he will not be bound by its ideas and has begun its own review of Iraq policy. While it set no hard timetable for the transition, the report said that by the first quarter of 2008 U.S. combat troops not needed for "force protection" could be out of Iraq, depending on security conditions in the country. More than 3-1/2 years after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, about 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq fighting an insurgency and trying to stop savage sectarian strife between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Bush has been under acute political pressure to change course in Iraq since the Nov. 7 elections, when U.S. voters, soured on the war, ended Republican control of Congress. The idea that the United States begin to withdraw troops from combat in Iraq rests on what analysts regard as a highly questionable assumption that Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over responsibility and staunching the bloodshed. The report also recommended that the U.S. military launch a rapid effort to train Iraqi forces to defend their country and said U.S. forces should gradually move to a supporting role. It set no hard timetable for the transition but said, by the first quarter of 2008, depending on conditions, U.S. combat troops not needed for "force protection" could be out of Iraq.

ITN Source | December 7, 2006

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