US alerting more troops for Iraq rotation duty

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will immediately begin ordering thousands of additional active-duty and reserve American troops, including Marines, to prepare to serve in Iraq early next year, defence officials said on Wednesday.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed that the troops will be part of a 2004 Iraq rotation plan, and that the 132,000 American troops now there could decrease to just over 100,000 in May.

Pace and defence officials did not provide the number of troops in the rotation plan. But officials said they would include Marines as well as two regular Army divisions, the 1st Infantry Division in Germany and the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas.

The Army has been recently shouldering most of the load in US military operations in Iraq. Marines played a prominent part in the invasion and were responsible for security in south-central Iraq until they left in September when a Polish-led multinational division arrived.

"We will be talking to Congress this afternoon and issuing orders tonight and having press briefings tomorrow on the next rotation of forces," Pace told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

"It does include a call-up of reserves, it does include use of land forces, it does include the Navy and Air Force."

Reserve and Guard troops are currently supporting regular US military units in deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, putting a strain on the US armed forces.

Families of some reservists have expressed concern about disruptions to their lives caused by yearlong deployments to Iraq.

In the past two months, the United States has activated three National Guard combat brigades of about about 5,000 troops each from North Carolina, Arkansas and Washington States to undergo training to go to Iraq early next year.

Pace told the committee that, in addition to larger active-duty units expected to be notified for service under the 2004 plan, large numbers of noncombat support troops from smaller Guard and Reserve units would be called to duty. Such support troops include communications specialists, logistics soldiers, medics and military police.

Deadly guerrilla attacks against American forces have been increasing in parts of Iraq and other countries have not responded to a Pentagon call for a third multinational division to support US troops there.

Pace announced the rotation call as lawmakers pressed him on how the Pentagon would field sufficient forces in Iraq, particularly after Turkey said it would not deploy troops there without a clear invitation from the Iraqi Governing Council.

"If we have what is really a diplomatic failure here, does that mean you are looking at increasing our national guard strength?" asked Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat.

Fifty-one members of the committee sent Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a letter urging "strong, meaningful action" to boost the Army by at least two divisions to take pressure off of the guard and reserves.

Pace said the Pentagon expected that one of the four US divisions now in Iraq will be replaced by Iraqi security forces and it wants to avoid an unnecessary build-up in the Army's overall size.

But Republican senator John McCain of Arizona, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Bush administration's push to train Iraqis for security smacked of desperation.

"Hastily trained Iraqi security forces cannot be expected to accomplish what US forces have not succeeded in doing," he said.

McCain also criticised the administration for creating the Iraqi Governing Council but not working "sufficiently to help it succeed." He called the council's resistance to Turkish troops another reminder of the US provisional authority's "self-imposed distance from the Iraqi leadership."

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq