Gates points to strategic reassessment in Iraq, but also residual US force

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iraq's failure to make political progress will lead to a strategic reassessment next month but the United States still envisions a residual US military presence for a protracted period, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday.

Gates called national reconciliation efforts "disappointing," and said he had warned Iraqi leaders that leaving on vacation was unacceptable because "every day we buy you ... we are buying with American blood."

But in television interviews, Gates said the US "surge" strategy had succeeded in dampening violence and that progress was being made in places like Iraq's western Al-Anbar province, where former opponents of the US occupation have "flipped."

Moreover, Gates said he told regional leaders during a trip to the Middle East last week that the United States anticipates working out arrangements with the Iraqis to keep a residual force in Iraq "at some fraction of the current level."

He said in an interview with CNN that it would be "a stabilizing and supporting force in Iraq for some protracted period of time."

"So I think that that's generally the view of almost anybody who is looking at this, that some kind of residual force for some period of time will be required beyond when we begin a drawdown," he said.

Gates admitted that the US administration had underestimated the depth of mistrust between Sunni and Shiite factions, and said the leadership's failure to pass legislation to further reconciliation was "disappointing."

Asked in an NBC television interview whether there would be a strategic reassessment if Iraq did not pass legislation to unify the country by mid-September, Gates said: "I think we would have to, Yes. That's the whole point of the Crocker-Petraeus effort."

He was referring to US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, who are scheduled to report to Congress by September 15 on whether a surge in US forces was working and what the next steps should be.

The lack of political progress by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has fueled calls for a timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

Gates gave no indication what will come out of the September reassessment. He said it was "possible" that there could be a reduction in the 155,000 US force in Iraq.

Gates said that, as a former member of the Iraq Study Group, he probably would have supported its recommendation that support for the central government be withheld if it failed to meet political benchmarks.

But he said the turnabout in Al-Anbar province and other Sunni areas had changed the circumstances.

"So it is a disappointing picture for the central government right now, but there are some positive things happening at the local level. And obviously in the security arena," he said.

He went on to say, "At some point there has to be reconciliation at the national level."

"I think we all perhaps underestimated the depth of the misunderstanding and mistrust among these sections in Baghdad over time," he said.