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Updated Thursday, September 29, 2011 11:27 am TWN, By Edith M. Lederer, AP

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Training forces may remain following US pullout: Iraq minister

UNITED NATIONS -- With a year-end deadline for the pullout of U.S. troops looming, Iraq's foreign minister said Tuesday he believes there will be an agreement with the United States to train his country's military and talks are already under way in Baghdad.

“We're looking for October for these talks to move forward,” Hoshyar Zebari said in an Associated Press interview.

The Obama administration is considering 3,000 to 5,000 troops for an Iraqi training mission, according to Washington officials familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. One Iraqi lawmaker close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Baghdad may ask only for about 2,500 forces.

“I think we will get an agreement on training,” Zebari said, but he would not discuss numbers and stressed that training could take place both outside and inside Iraq.

“How many trainers will remain in Iraq is not that important,” he said. “It's the commitment that is very important.”

Regardless, Zebari said, there will be no new status of forces or security agreement with the Americans.

“The political conditions in Iraq have changed. That's why it's difficult,” he said.

Any move that leaves U.S. forces in the country past the end of the year has been vigorously opposed by anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia was responsible for much of the violence in the country when it was consumed in a near civil war in 2005 and 2006. Al-Sadr has threatened a resumption of violence if the U.S. troops remain into 2012.

“We reject even the staying of trainers,” Sadrist lawmaker Mushraq Naji said last week. “Our stance is clear and that all U.S. troops should leave. Negotiations to keep them here run against the will of the Iraqi people.”

Zebari said the government has support from most political leaders for the talks with the Americans on training mission arrangements because the country doesn't have the military expertise to protect its shores and oil terminals, control its airspace and air defenses, “and even the land forces need” training.

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