AFP,
Foreign troops in Iraq are motivating “terrorists” there and should be pulled out as soon as possible, preferably by the end of 2006, the recently retired head of Australia's military said Monday.
US-led coalition troops should be removed as quickly as local forces can be trained to take their place, said Peter Cosgrove, who stepped down in June.
“I think we've got to train the Iraqis as quickly as we can and to a point where we take one of the focal points of terrorist motivation away, and that is foreign troops,” the retired general said in the ABC programme to be aired late Monday.
Cosgrove said foreign troops could leave once an adequate Iraqi security force was in place.
Asked how soon this could occur, he said: “Well, I figure that if we could get that done by the end of 2006, that would be really good.”
Australia has some 900 troops in Iraq and Prime Minister John Howard, a strong supporter of US President George W. Bush's “war on terror”, has said they would only leave once their work was finished.
Howard has also insisted that Australia's involvement in Iraq had not put it at increased risk of attack, as alleged by critics.
Questioned on Cosgrove's comments, Howard said he agreed that the most important objective was to train Iraqi forces to the point where they could manage security without foreign help.
“My view is that the terrorists in Iraq are not only targeting foreign forces, they are in fact targetting the democratic process and the objective of the terrorists is to stop the emergence of a free Iraq,” Howard told Sky News.
“And one way of ensuring that there is a free Iraq is to train the Iraqi army to the extent necessary for them to be able to secure their position without foreign help.”
Howard, who said he would not commit himself to a deadline on the deployment of Australian soldiers, said any premature withdrawal of foreign forces would “condemn the future of Iraq to terrorism.”
The opposition Labor party, which opposed going into Iraq and has called for a timeframe for Australia's involvement in the country, supported Cosgrove's comments.
“He was saying that the presence of foreign troops in Iraq is a principal focus of terrorist motivation,” parliamentarian Kelvin Thomson told reporters.
“And, I think, if we're serious about reducing the risk of terrorism in Australia and wanting to do everything we can to reduce the risk of terrorism in Australia, then we should get Australian troops out of Iraq.”
Cosgrove, whose son served in the Australia contingent in Iraq and was slightly injured in a bombing in Baghdad, said the global landscape had changed after the September 11 attacks and the subsequent US-led “war on terror”.
“We can't restore previous to 9/11. We're in a situation now where there is an overt, obvious, manifest phenomenon of global terrorism or networked terrorism,” he said.
But he said the lowest point for the coalition in Iraq was the emergence of evidence of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
“I couldn't believe that an element of the US armed forces would be involved in an improper way like that looking after detainees,” he said.
“I can understand that you don't mollycoddle people who are detained for one reason or another, but that's light years away from maltreating them.”
