- The Pentagon wants long-term access to four military
airfields in Iraq in a move that is expected to send shockwaves throughout
the Middle East.
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- While the bases would be used to guarantee Iraq's security,
they would almost certainly be seen as a threat by neighbouring countries
such as Syria and Iran, with the latter already concerned by the US presence
in Afghanistan.
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- Those concerns will be exacerbated by calls from Ahmad
Chalabi, a pro-US Iraqi politician, for US forces to remain in Iraq until
the country holds elections, a process he said could take two years.
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- As other US military commitments in the Middle East are
wound down in the wake of the war, Pentagon planners believe the four bases
would become central to US power projection in the region.
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- The New York Times reported yesterday that the military
had picked out the international airport in Baghdad, Tallil airfield near
An Nasariyah in the south, Bashur air field in northern Iraq and the H-1
airstrip in the western desert, near the border with Jordan, as sites for
the bases. US access to the bases would leave Iraq's neighbours Syria and
Iran within striking distance.
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- A senior US official acknowledged: "It will make
them nervous."
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- Although some Pentagon officials questioned whether the
bases needed to be manned continually, permanent access was seen as an
essential element in the US military's plans for Iraq and the wider region.
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- "There will be some kind of a long-term defence
relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan," one senior
administration official told the Times newspaper. "The scope of that
has yet to be defined - whether it will be full-up operational bases, smaller
forward operating bases or just plain access."
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- Pentagon officials declined to comment on the report.
However last week the Pentagon quietly withdrew 30 fighter planes and 2,000
personnel from the Incirlik air base in Turkey, halving the US presence
at the base.
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- That step is seen as part of a longer process of withdrawal
from large parts of the Middle East and is expected to be followed by a
dramatic reduction in the number of US military personnel in Saudi Arabia.
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- General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, last week told Arab reporters at the Foreign Press Centre in
Washington: "Clearly one of the reasons we had US forces in the region
prior to this was to enforce the [no-fly zones] in Iraq. And so those forces
that were in Turkey for that purpose, they've already returned home.
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- "You know, we had forces in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
as well. And clearly they're not going to be needed in the future for that.
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- "So that's all going into the examination of this,
and I think that sometime here in the fairly near future we'll be able
to publicly talk about what kind of US footprint would be in the region."
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- The US is expected to maintain only a skeleton presence
at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, while the army battalion stationed
in Kuwait is also expected to be recalled.
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- Lieutenant General Michael Moseley, who directed the
air war from a base outside Riyadh, is expected to meet Saudi officials
to discuss future basing arrangements in the next few days.
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- Current agreements and troop levels in Bahrain, with
whom the US has had a military relationship for 50 years, would not be
affected by the withdrawals.
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- Thomas Donnelly, a military analyst at the American Enterprise
Institute, said: "As a military proposition, we don't really need
very much of a presence there [Saudi Arabia] anymore, and maybe this will
all remove some of the pressure from US-Saudi relations."
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- But he added that he expected the US to maintain a military
presence in Iraq "for a long, long time".
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- That presence is bound to create new controversy in the
Arab world. But it will be welcomed by Mr Chalabi, who believes a US military
presence is needed in Iraq to help ensure a peaceful transfer of power
from the initial US-led replacement government to the proposed Iraqi Interim
Authority.
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- "The military presence of the United States in Iraq
is a necessity until at least the first democratic election is held, and
I think this process should take two years," said Mr Chalabi, the
head of the Iraqi National Congress.
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- Mr Chalabi also told ABC television: "There is a
role for the Islamic religious parties [in the new Iraq], including Shia
religious parties, because they have some constituencies. But they are
not going to be forcing any agenda or any theocracy on the Iraqi people."
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- Mr Chalabi said reports of emerging assertions of power
by clerics and religious groups in some cities should be viewed as acts
of defiance against the deposed Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, after
a period of repression rather than as a threat to stability.
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- "I do not think this should be read as anyone trying
to set up an authority or to challenge whatever emerges from the process
of an interim authority," he said.
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- US politicians are already thinking that the two years
Mr Chalabi has given to get Iraq up and running could be a conservative
estimate.
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- A senior US legislator admitted yesterday the United
States had underestimated the first phase of what he envisaged could be
a four- to five-year effort to rebuild Iraq.
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- The US had not planned the post-war transition as carefully
as the military campaign that removed Saddam from power, said Richard Lugar,
an Indiana Republican and the Senate foreign relations committee chairman,
on Meet the Press, a US current affairs programme.
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- "They started very late," Mr Lugar added, talking
about US efforts to restore political stability to Iraq.
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- The power vacuum left by the end of Saddam's rule had
hurt many in Iraq, he said.
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- "A gap has occurred and that has brought some considerable
suffering. Among those rushing in to fill the void are clerics and religious
groups."
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- Mr Lugar called on the Bush administration to give clear
estimates of the duration and cost of US involvement in post-war Iraq and
said the political transition to a democracy could take four to five years.
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- "I would think at least we ought to be thinking
of a period of five years of time. That may understate it," he said.
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- http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=456412003
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