BAGHDAD: Months before the US is due to complete its withdrawal from Iraq, Washington is stepping up pressure on Iraqi leaders to decide whether US troops should stay to help fend off a still-potent insurgency. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates Thursday hailed the “extraordinary” progress made in Iraq, and said Baghdad set an example for democracy in the region. Gates, who arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday evening, met with Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, commander of US military forces in Iraq, before going into talks with Iraqi leaders. At the Camp Liberty US base west of Baghdad, the Pentagon chief met with a company of some 200 US soldiers engaged in training the Iraqi army and police. “To see Iraq today — and when you look at the turbulences going across the entire region — lots of these folks would be happy if they could get to where Iraq is today,” Gates told reporters after meeting the troops. “It's not perfect but it's new and it's a democracy and people do have rights.” Gates added that the US would be willing to consider extending its military presence in Iraq beyond the end of this year. A bilateral security pact requires the US to withdraw its remaining force of around 47,000 troops by year's end. “If folks here are going to want us to have a presence we're going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning and our ability to figure out where we get the forces, what kind of forces we need here and what specifically the mission they want us to do,” Gates told troops on a sprawling US base next to Baghdad airport. “I think there is interest in having a continuing presence, but the politics are such that we'll just have to wait and see because the initiative ultimately has to come from the Iraqis,” he said. More than eight years after the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, Iraq is struggling to halt violence from a weakened but still lethal insurgency and to put an end to a long period of political instability following general elections more than a year ago. General Lloyd Austin, who commands US forces in Iraq, told reporters he had not yet made a recommendation to the White House on how many troops would stay if such a deal is struck. But he said there might be a drop-dead point after which it would be too expensive or difficult to keep troops in Iraq, or send them back once they have left. “The clock is ticking,” he said. “We will reach a point ... where it will be very difficult to recreate things that we've disassembled.” “You can do anything but it costs more money and more resources and, quite frankly, our country right now as you know is not interested in having to expend more resources because we wasted an opportunity.”
