By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday pledged to keep as many U.S. troops in Iraq as necessary to stabilize the country and said it could take longer than a year to create the conditions necessary for a new Iraqi government to assume control of the nation.
Rumsfeld spoke shortly after the United States, Britain and Spain formally presented a draft resolution on Iraq's interim governance to the United Nations Security Council. The draft calls for the United States and Britain to assume the responsibilities of "occupying powers" under international law. It would grant the two countries broad authority for managing Iraq's political and economic life, including control over its oil revenue, for an initial period of a year and longer, if necessary.
Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the resolution's reference to "an initial" occupation of a year "is probably just a review period, because anyone who thinks they know how long it's going to take is fooling themselves."
"The United States is prepared to keep any number of troops that are appropriate and necessary in Iraq for as long as it takes to create a secure and permissive environment so that [the Iraqis] can go about their business of reconstructing their country," Rumsfeld said.
Amid complaints from U.S. officials and military personnel in Iraq about continuing instability and lagging reconstruction efforts, Rumsfeld and his top military commander, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, conceded problems existed. But they said considerable progress has been made since the war to topple the government of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein began 53 days ago.
Insisting that conditions are improving "in almost every corner of that country," Rumsfeld urged patience. "It's going to take some time," he said at a news conference at the Pentagon. "And we accept that, and we're there to create an environment where that process can take place. And we have patience and we accept the fact that it's untidy. And I hope that others can recognize that and accept it, and put it into some historical context."
With about 135,000 U.S. forces and another 40,000 British troops now in Iraq, Rumsfeld has avoided estimating how many will be necessary over what time period to stabilize the country and ensure its return to self-governance, other than to say that U.S. troop levels could ultimately be reduced.
He has said this would depend in part upon the number of peacekeeping forces contributed by other countries.
But Rumsfeld has in recent weeks left the impression that he was interested in committing as few troops as possible for as short a time as necessary for stabilizing Iraq, given his long-standing assertion that U.S. combat forces in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan should return home as other countries assume peacekeeping obligations.
Yesterday, however, both Rumsfeld and Franks emphasized the open-ended nature of the Pentagon's troop deployments in Iraq.
"I think right now what the future will hold a year, two, three . . .ahead of us is not exactly knowable," Franks said.
Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, which ran the war, acknowledged that basic services such as health care, electricity and water while are improving but are "not where they need to be, and certainly not where they will be."
"Iraq's best days are yet to come," Franks said, "and the Iraqi people are already taking steps to build a new government that will, in fact, be of their choice."
Rumsfeld and Franks commented one day after Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of allied ground forces in Iraq, said in Baghdad that his forces could not guarantee total security in a country the size of California that has 25 million people.
Now that the 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, is heading into Iraq, the total number of U.S. forces on the ground could increase, with Pentagon officials saying that the 3rd Infantry Division -- the main force that invaded Baghdad --could delay its departure until June.
"Security in that country is absolutely critical to everything else that's going to be done there," Franks said. "A condition has to be established so that the people of Iraq can feel free to unshutter the windows of their shops and go to work and so forth."
He said change in the composition of U.S. forces is likely to take place as heavy combat units are withdrawn and replaced with military police, engineers and less heavily armed forces more suitable to stability operations. But Franks declined to estimate how many troops would be needed over time. "I'm not sure at this point we know exactly what the force structure or size is going to look [like] -- or what the international content is going to look like as we move forward," Franks said.
Last week, senior Bush administration officials revealed a plan for creating three separate commands for managing postwar Iraq to be headed by the United States, Britain and Poland. While the U.S. command would involve primarily U.S. forces, they said, the British and Polish would command multinational forces, with Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, Netherlands and Ukraine all agreeing to provide troops.
But by and large, these countries do not seem to be offering large numbers of troops. Earlier this week, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Poland's defense minister, met with Rumsfeld and said that his country would need $50 million in financial assistance to provide a headquarters elements and about 1,500 troops in Iraq for six months. A full year's stay would run about $90 million.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar pledged during his visit to Washington this week that Spain would send as many as 1,500 troops but said they would be forbidden from engaging in combat.
Britain, which has already reduced the number of its forces in Iraq from 45,000 to 40,000, held a meeting this week in London with representatives of nations interested in committing peacekeeping forces to the British command in Iraq. But a British official in Washington said it is "too early to [talk] about force commitments, force rotations and length of stay."
Rumsfeld said that "a large number of countries are stepping forward," adding that only a minority of them have said that their commitment of troops would be contingent upon successful passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution.
But questions remain about how many forces NATO allies would be willing to commit, particularly now that NATO is preparing to assume control of a 5,500-troop international force in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld has complained that the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan has been confined to the Kabul area and not deployed across the entire country because so few countries have been willing to commit forces.
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