- The CIA's station chief in Baghdad has sent a bleak cable
to Washington, giving warning that the situation in Iraq is getting worse
and may not improve any time soon.
-
- The senior undercover operative, whose 300-man post represents
the largest CIA presence abroad since the Vietnam War, offered his blunt
assessment that the political, economic and security situation in Iraq
was deteriorating and was likely to get worse in coming months, with more
violence and clashes between ethnic and religious groups, the New York
Times reported.
-
- The only hope lay in a dramatic improvement in the capacity
of the interim Iraqi authorities to stamp their authority on the country
and rebuild the economy, he wrote in the classified cable - a valedictory
address from a station chief returning from a year-long posting.
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- Another senior CIA official, Michael Kostiw, visited
Iraq recently and returned with a similarly "mixed" picture of
the situation, it was reported.
-
- News of the CIA's warning came as Iyad Allawi, the interim
prime minister, told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir that the elections scheduled
for Jan 30 were likely to be spread over 15 to 20 days to enable security
forces to concentrate on volatile areas.
-
- He acknowledged that the level of violence in Iraq meant
forces could not spread themselves wide enough to ensure a peaceful and
fair vote.
-
- The CIA's brutal assessment runs counter to upbeat assessments
from President George W Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
-
- Mr Bush carefully played down the insurgency in Iraq
during a meeting with Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, the interim Iraqi president,
at the White House on Monday, dismissing insurgents as "the few people
in Iraq that are trying to stop the march towards democracy".
-
- Mr Rumsfeld, aboard a flight to Kabul for the inauguration
of President Hamid Karzai, said he hoped and expected that US forces would
be able to leave Iraq within the next four-year term of the Bush presidency.
"Iraqi security forces have been performing very well in most instances,"
he said.
-
- The US ambassador to Baghdad, John Negroponte, said the
CIA gave too little credit to recent US victories against insurgents. However,
the assessments acknowledged that the Iraqi authorities were making important
political progress and hailed the "resilience" of the Iraqi people.
-
- The Pentagon last week announced an increase in US troop
strength in Iraq from 138,000 to 150,000, to improve security before the
elections and maintain the offensive against insurgent strongholds.
-
- General John Abizaid, the overall commander of US forces
in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Washington Post that it might be possible
to reduce US combat forces as early as next year and concentrate more energy
on training Iraqi security forces.
-
- Explaining the increase in troop strength, Gen Abizaid
said domestic Iraqi forces were "not as mature as they need to be
for the security environment that's going to exist in the next several
months".
-
- A US-led multi-national force would have to remain for
some time beyond next year, Gen Abizaid said, to provide a back-up to Iraqi
forces in case of dire emergency but it was hoped that it could be smaller
and possibly dominated by a larger proportion of special operations forces.
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- The hope was that combat would become a secondary function
for the US-led foreign forces, behind training and providing a reassuring
"presence".
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- In his interview with Le Soir, Mr Allawi said 14 or 15
of Iraq's 18 provinces where polling would begin on Jan 30 were currently
calm but conceded that the security situation in Mosul in the north, in
Anbar province around Fallujah, in parts of Diyala province and in small
areas of Baghdad were "bad".
-
- He said: "So that everyone, Shi'ites, Sunnis, Christians,
Kurds, Turkomans can take part in the vote, I think one can envisage elections
spread over 15 to 20 days with polling on different dates for different
provinces.
-
- "That would allow for adequate security arrangements
to be put in place."
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- The Bush administration has refused to consider appeals
from some Iraqi politicians to delay the elections until the security situation
improved, especially in restive Sunni areas.
-
- Mr Bush said keeping to the timetable would send "a
clear message" to insurgents that they could not delay the advent
of free elections.
-
- The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday led
a chorus of international criticism of the timing of the elections, saying
he "could not imagine" how free and fair elections could be held
given that the country was under "total occupation".
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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