December 05, 2007

Gates Urges Patience But Sees Iraq's Stability 'Within Reach'

UPDATED.

On an unannounced visit to Iraq today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he believed "that a secure, stable Iraq is within reach," but he cautioned that "much remains to be done" to bring full stability to the country.

Underscoring his pleas for patience, Gates' comments came as a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad. Reuters reports that 15 people were killed in that attack and eight more were killed in bombings in three other Iraqi cities today.

The defense secretary has remained cautious in his assessments of the progress being made in Iraq. His visit this week, the sixth he's made since taking over for Donald Rumsfeld a year ago, comes amid a recent spate of positive news coming out of the war-torn country. Pentagon officials said Gates is on the ground to assess whether reported declines in violence and cooperation from Iran in preventing arms imports are accurate, and whether those improvements can be sustained in the long term.

"Senior defense officials said the jury is still out on both fronts, and the Pentagon is being cautious not to declare victory yet in either case," AP reported this morning.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, defending her vote to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, said in a debate yesterday that such sanctions had spurred Iran to help stem the flow of weapons into Iraq. But officials told AP that it's still unclear "how seriously to take indications" that the arms imports are declining, and it "has yet to be proven, through either intelligence or other assessments, that a significant portion of the reduction in violence is due to any deliberate policy by the Iranian government."

Meanwhile, in his visit with leaders in the northern city of Mosul earlier today, Gates discussed an increase in violence in that part of the country and praised Iraqi troops for aiding in the fight against terrorists and insurgents. "I know that the Iraqi people are more than up to this challenge," he said in his remarks to reporters.

The New York Times reports that Gates also told military officials today that he did not think the situation in Anbar province had improved enough to merit a proposed shift of Marine Corps forces from that region to Afghanistan.

Gates traveled to Iraq this morning from Afghanistan, where he met with top officials in Kabul yesterday amid a flare-up of violence there. Agence France-Presse and the Los Angeles Times have more on Gates' visit.

Posted at 3:15 PM
Posted to: Afghanistan, Bush Administration, Iraq, Robert Gates
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