Iraqi police say a bomb in the city of Fallujah has killed four police and one civilian.
A police official says 15 people were injured in the blast outside a bank in the one-time Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. The injured included an Iraqi TV cameraman.
Police and a crowd gathered in the bank area after an explosion at 6:30am yesterday. A second blast caused the casualties.
The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
In related news, the White House said yesterday that the US remained opposed to setting an “arbitrary” date for withdrawing troops from Iraq, after Iraqi officials called for a timetable as part of a security agreement being negotiated with Washington.
“We have always been opposed and remain so to an arbitrary withdrawal date,” White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino said to reporters traveling with US President George W. Bush in Japan.
The US believes those decisions should be “based on conditions on the ground” and Iraqi officials agree with that, she said.
Iraq’s national security adviser on Tuesday said Iraq would not accept any security agreement with the US unless it included dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces. But the government’s spokesman said any timetable would depend on security conditions on the ground.
Their differences underscored the debate in Baghdad over the security pact with Washington that will provide a legal basis for US troops to remain when a UN mandate expires at the end of the year
The White House said the statements from Iraqi officials about a timetable for troop withdrawal partly reflected improvements in the security situation in Iraq.
“I think that is a reflection of first and foremost the positive developments that we’ve seen recently in Iraq, but in addition to that, the negotiations are intensifying,” Perino said.
“This is about their future and they want to take on more of their own responsibility, and we want that too,” she said.
Perino said she would not put a timetable on when the security agreement might be completed.
“We want to be able to try to work this out quickly and the main reason that we want this is because our troops are going to be there past the end of this year. That’s a fact,” she said.
Meanwhile, a US Army three-star general, who for a year led efforts to train Iraq’s army and police units, said progress was mixed and US help was needed for the foreseeable future.
Lieutenant General James Dubik was expected to tell the House Armed Services Committee yesterday that the size of Iraq’s security forces have grown by more than a quarter — from 444,000 to 566,000 — since he assumed command of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in June last year. He added that the forces were improving their ability to execute operations on their own.
But the fast-growing force lacks experienced military leaders and the inability to train all of its new recruits, Dubik says.
“As I often said to my command in Baghdad, ‘progress doesn’t result in no problems, it results in new problems,’” he wrote in prepared testimony for the hearing.
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