IRAQ: The US military denied British newspaper reports yesterday that it planned to pull its forces from Iraq early next year, saying the stories, sourced to senior British defence officials, were "completely false".
Britain's Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Mirror said a plan for US and British forces to withdraw in spring 2007 followed an acceptance by the two governments that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq was now the greatest obstacle to peace.
But Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, denied the reports and said withdrawal of 133,000 US troops would depend on the security situation in Iraq.
"We're going to do exactly what we said we were going to do, which is to make the assessment of the situation on the ground," he told US television.
"The commanders in theatre will make the recommendations up the chain of command . . . to the president for a decision about US troop levels." He said the war was going "very, very well".
After 10 days of bloodshed following the destruction of a Shia mosque in Samarra, there was less violence yesterday.
Two cousins and the nephew of the secretary general of the Muslim Clerics' Association, the main Sunni religious body, were killed when gunmen ambushed their car in western Baghdad. A mortar or rocket damaged doors and windows at a Sunni mosque in the northern city of Mosul, a cleric said. - (Reuters)