WASHINGTON/baghdad: The US military is planning to train Iraqi troops in a third country to help counter a resurgence of Al Qaeda-linked militants, a defense official said yesterday.
Pending an agreement with Jordan or another nation to host the effort, the training was “likely” to go ahead as both Baghdad and Washington supported the idea, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pentagon officials were not contemplating sending an American team of military trainers into Iraq, partly because it would require negotiating a legal agreement with Baghdad that proved elusive in the past.
Such a move also would spark a bitter political debate in Washington that would revive old wounds over the US-led war in Iraq. “We’re in discussions with the Iraqis on how we can improve the Iraqi security forces,” Colonel Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
He said a possible counter-terrorism training effort was under consideration and that the Pentagon planned to send guns and ammunition on the request of the Iraqi government.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki “is looking for essentially small arms an ammunition, stuff that can help him right now” in the fight against Islamist extremists, Warren said.
The United States was preparing to ship “several thousand” M-16 and M-4 assault rifles as well as ammunition, the defense official said.
Meanwhile, a suicide bombing and shelling in Iraq’s Anbar province killed six people as security forces pressed an assault yesterday against militants for territory the government lost weeks ago.
Unrest in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq has already killed more than 600 people this month, fuelling fears the country is slipping back into all-out sectarian war with little appetite for political compromise ahead of an April general election.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats have urged Baghdad to pursue political reconciliation, but Prime Minister Maliki has ruled out dialogue with militants, and the authorities have instead trumpeted police and army operations.
Yesterday, thousands of elite security forces pressed an assault on Albubali, a rural area where officials say a large number of anti-government fighters are holed up.
The area of farmland and villages lies between Ramadi and Fallujah, the two cities in the western desert province at the centre of the crisis.AFP
