Petraeus says US troop levels can be cut

UNITED STATES: The number of U.S. troops in Iraq could fall to about 130,000 by next summer, the total before this year’s build-up, but it is too early to say when it may go lower, the top U.S. general in Iraq said.

Gen. David Petraeus, facing Democratic lawmakers and many U.S. voters demanding a quick end to the U.S. involvement in Iraq, outlined a path to restore the lower troop levels without jeopardizing security improvements he said were taking place.

Petraeus appeared at a congressional hearing seen as a key moment in the U.S. debate over the war, which U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed to pursue but which many leading Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, say must end.

Speaking about a war that has killed more than 3,700 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, Petraeus strongly endorsed Bush’s decision to add about 30,000 troops this year.

“I believe we will be able to reduce our forces to pre-surge level by next summer without jeopardizing the security gains,” Petraeus said in an appearance with U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.

“The military objectives of the surge are in large measure being met,” Petraeus added. The general said he had proposed that a unit of about 2,200 Marines should leave Iraq this month as previously planned.

If his recommendations are accepted, a combat brigade — which typically has 4,000 soldiers — would leave in December, followed by four more brigades as well as two Marine battalions of several hundred troops that would depart by August 2008.

That would restore troop levels to roughly where they were in January when Bush, embarking on a new policy, decided to add troops to give Iraqi leaders breathing space to achieve political reconciliation among warring Shi’ites and Sunnis.

“The administration’s myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco,” added House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat.

“The administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two committees and the Congress that victory is at hand ... I don’t buy it.” Crocker said Iraq was making progress despite the violence and the lack of broad political reconciliation.

“A secure, stable democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors is, in my view, attainable. The cumulative trajectory of political, economic and diplomatic developments in Iraq is upwards although the slope of that line is not sleep,” he said. “This process will not be quick. It will be uneven.”

Washington, Tuesday, Reuters.