BAGHDAD, Iraq – A Kurdish army brigade from the north of Iraq is undergoing intensive urban combat training for deployment to Baghdad, where it expects to take on the Mahdi Army Shiite militia, its commander said Saturday.
Meanwhile, three Iraqi generals said the Iraqi commander who will lead the Baghdad security mission was the government’s second choice and only got the job after the U.S. military objected to the first officer named to the post by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
In the northern city of Irbil, Brig. Gen. Nazir Assem Korran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division of the Iraqi army, said “we will head to Baghdad soon. We have 3,000 soldiers who are currently undergoing intensive training especially in urban combat and how the army should act inside a city.”
Korran said he did not know how the operation would unfold but said the Defense Ministry had asked his brigade to take part in the security operation along with thousands of other Iraqi and U.S. troops.
The forces were to conduct neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches to clear the city of Sunni Muslim insurgents and local militias such as the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been an ally of al-Maliki.
“We are going to confront any terrorist elements or militias. We will confront any outlaws,” the general said. He did not name the Mahdi Army, but the Shiite militia is blamed for much of the capital’s sectarian killing and is the only true militia presence in Baghdad.
Later in the day, al-Maliki issued his first comment on the new Bush administration plan outlined Wednesday, declaring it “identical to our strategy and intentions.” President Bush said he would send additional 21,500 troops to help pacify the capital and other parts of the country.
Al-Maliki, however, continued to avoid naming the Mahdi Army of al-Sadr.
“Our strategy that aims to control security is based on using force against any outlaws whatever their background or identity,” al-Maliki said in a brief appearance aired on state-run Iraqiya television. Al-Maliki has repeatedly used that kind of formulaic language during his eight months in office, but has blocked American forces from taking on his militia allies.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who opposes Bush’s plans to send more U.S. soldiers, met Saturday with al-Maliki and the two top American commanders during her first visit in nearly a year.
The New York Democrat, who was expected to run for the party’s presidential nomination, called the situation in Iraq “heartbreaking” and said she doubted the al-Maliki government would live up to promises it had made about cracking down on violence.
“I don’t know that the American people or the Congress at this point believe this mission can work,” she said in an interview with ABC News in Baghdad. “And in the absence of a commitment that is backed up by actions from the Iraqi government, why should we believe it?”
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