Downing Street Says

Asked how optimistic the Prime Minister was about Iraq, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that yesterday we saw in Baghdad the benefits of democracy. We now had a national unity government which genuinely represented all the people of Iraq. Whether it was the meeting with Prime Minister al-Maliki, or President Talabani, and his Sunni and Shia vice presidents you got a real sense of a government of national unity. That was what was important.

Put to him that the new Prime Minister of Iraq had a very good relationship with Iran and asked if the Prime Minister expected there to be talks concerning Basra and the suspected flow of weapons from Iran into the South of Iraq, the PMOS said that as he said yesterday the Iraqi government had spoken explicitly about Basra yesterday. They had announced that a high level delegation would go there to talk to community groups. He didn’t want to speak for the Iraqi government but he believed they would have contact with Iran itself. It was only right to give the new government space to see what it could do to take control of the situation. The Iraqi Government quite rightly saw Basra as hugely important to the success of Iraq as a whole because it was an entrepot and was very important economically. Therefore the new Iraqi Government’s interests were the same as ours, which was to calm the situation down and let the infrastructure spending and improvement go ahead, which was what everyone in Basra wanted.

Asked if we could expect to see further announcements of troop withdrawals from Iraq, the PMOS said that we should be clear about the situation with the troops. It was not an issue that we were in any way worried about discussing or defensive about. We had been quite clear, as had the Iraqi Government. Nobody wanted our troops to stay in Iraq forever. Equally however no group, be it Shia, Sunni, or Kurd, who didn’t have links to the insurgency, wanted the troops to withdraw immediately. What we needed was a situation where, if the conditions were right, we could pull back our troops and then withdraw. It was that condition based approach which would guide everything we did and what the Iraqi Government wanted us to do. As conditions improved, and we should bear in mind the Iraqi Prime Minister had said he wanted this process to start in June, we would pull back troops province by province. The important thing to remember was that of the 18 provinces, 14 were relatively calm and therefore the process could begin. That process would develop its own momentum, that was the important thing.

Put to him that the Iraqi military might not be big enough to manage a full replacement, the PMOS said that looking at it from the other end of the glass, we now had 250,000 members of the Iraqi army. What mattered just as much as the numbers of troops was the readiness, and that was the key word, of Iraqi troops to take responsibility. That would be the key test in terms of training, equipment and experience, they had to be ready. The Iraqi Prime Minister had made it very clear yesterday that he wanted this process to go as quickly as possible. Not because his first priority was to get our troops out, but because his first priority was to see Iraqis take control of their own destiny. That meant focussing on issues such as improving security in Baghdad and improving energy supplies in Baghdad so that he could be seen to be delivering for the people. This government had the same political motives as any other government, it wanted to be seen to be delivering for the people who elected it.

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» Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Iraq

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