At the same time, U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave widely publicized interviews on Fox News and ABC TV marking two years of the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Rumsfeld said Ankara’s decision to not allow U.S. troops to use Turkish soil to launch a northern front in the 2003 invasion of Iraq allowed most of the best units of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard to escape with their weapons and command intact. Regrouped as irregulars later, these forces have been at the center of the armed campaign against U.S. and Iraqi government forces as well as civilians, Rumsfeld said, and Washington has been waging a war against them since last fall.

Meanwhile, Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said that Rome would begin a “gradual” reduction of the 3,000 Italian troops in Iraq in September. Most of the big-business media presented the announcement as another blow to the Bush administration’s course in Iraq. There is evidence, however, that Berlusconi made the statement largely for electoral purposes, two weeks before Italy’s regional elections. His move does not represent another defection from Washington’s “coalition of the willing.”  
 
Kurds press to consolidate autonomy
Officials of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) said Iraq’s National Assembly would reconvene soon. “If things go smoothly we could see a presidential council elected in the same session,” said Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, according to Reuters. Al-Uloum is the UIA’s candidate to head Iraq’s oil ministry. The assembly will reconvene after Kurdish parties and the UIA sign an agreement on the status of Kirkuk.

On March 11, Kurdish parties and the UIA announced an agreement to form a new government in which UIA leader Ibrahim Jaafari would be named prime minister and Jalal Talabani, a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, would become president. Kurdish groups hold 77 seats in the 275-member National Assembly elected in January. The UIA won a slim majority with 146 seats, not enough to form the government on its own.

Talks between the two groups on the details of their agreement broke down days before the March 16 opening session of the assembly, reported Agence France Presse. The session was rocked by several nearby explosions. But it was Kurdish demands for control of Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s largest oil centers, and incorporation of the city’s surrounding province into their autonomous region that prevented the assembly from conducting anything more than a ceremonial opening. The Kurds also seek to strengthen their autonomy in three northeastern provinces, popularly called Iraqi Kurdistan.

Starting in the 1970s, the Baathist regime expelled thousands of Kurds from Kirkuk and replaced them with Arabs in order to assure Baghdad’s control of oil reserves in the area. Kurds are demanding the right to return to their lands and homes.  
 
Turkish ban caused U.S. army trouble
U.S. troops continue to focus their fire on organized and well-armed military units of the deposed Hussein regime. In what has been described as their largest firefight since the January 30 elections, U.S. soldiers reportedly killed dozens of irregulars on a road south of Baghdad in the area known as the Triangle of Death.

The Hussein regime had its strongest base among the wealthy layers of the Sunni Arab minority. It’s in the largely Sunni Arab areas that groups organizing attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, as well as bombings aimed at civilians and kidnappings and beheadings of hostages, have been based.

On the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Fox and ABC TV News. ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked Rumsfeld what mistakes Washington made during the invasion. “Well, the first thing I think I would say and the most important thing was that had we been successful in getting the Fourth Infantry Division to come in through Turkey in the north when our forces were coming up from the south out of Kuwait, I believe that a considerably smaller number of the Baathists and the regime elements would have escaped,” Rumsfeld responded. “More would have been captured or killed. And as a result, the insurgency would have been at a lesser intensity than it is today.”  
 
Rome’s electoral maneuver
Facing local elections in April, Italy’s premier, Silvio Berlusconi, said on a state TV talk show, “Starting with the month of September we would like to proceed with a gradual reduction of our soldiers” in Iraq. He added that the withdrawal would be tied to progress made in training Iraqi government security forces, according to the Associated Press.

Italy has the fourth-largest contingent of troops in Iraq after Washington, London, and Seoul. Berlusconi said he told Britain’s prime minister, Anthony Blair, “We need to construct a precise exit strategy, also because our publics’ opinions expect this communication.”

Blair’s office at Downing Street downplayed Berlusconi’s remarks, saying they had been “misinterpreted.” According to the BBC, Blair told the House of Commons, “Neither the Italian government nor ourselves have set some form of deadline for withdrawal.”

Asked abut Berlusconi’s remark during a March 16 White House press conference, U.S. president George Bush said he had spoken with Berlusconi, who said “he wanted me to know that there was no change in his policy, that, in fact, any withdrawals would be done in consultation with allies and would be done depending upon the ability of Iraqis to defend themselves.” Bush said he asked Berlusconi if he could say that to the media, to which the Italian prime minister replied, “absolutely.”

“Berlusconi’s decision is aimed at triggering an immediate effect in favor of candidates supporting his center right coalition, just over two weeks ahead of local elections in which some 40 million Italians can vote,” the main daily in Milan, Corriere della Serra, editorialized.  
 
 
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