Pat Dollard

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US Defence Secretary Robert Gates met US and local commanders in Iraq on Monday, reviewing what he said will be “a mission transition” as the US force shrinks and turns over more of the country to Iraqis.

Gates flew in unannounced to promote General Raymond Odierno to his fourth star and attend a military ceremony on Tuesday when he takes over command of the 146,000-strong US force in Iraq from General David Petraeus .

The visit — Gates’s eighth as defence secretary — also coincides with negotiations over a controversial security pact to govern the presence of US forces in Iraq when their UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

“We are clearly on a mission in transition,” Gates told reporters on the flight to Baghdad.

With levels of violence down to around four-year lows after an 18-month “surge” in US forces, President George W. Bush last week announced plans to send 8,000 troops home by January.

“There is no question we will still be engaged as we are, but the areas in which we are seriously engaged will I think continue to narrow,” Gates said.

“And the challenge for General Odierno is how do we work with the Iraqis to preserve the gains that have already been achieved, and expand upon them even as the number of US forces are shrinking.”

Responsibility for security of 11 of Iraq’s 18 provinces has already been turned over to Iraqis and Gates said a couple more would probably join them by the end of the year.

“So it’s a transition from a focus on the surge brigades and the surge strategy to more Iraqi units in the lead, and us in more of an overwatch role,” he said.

Iraq was spiralling into all-out civil war when Petraeus took over as commander in February 2007, almost four years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Gates credited Petraeus’s “brilliant strategy” and its implementation by US troops and field commanders for the success of the surge.

“I think he’s played a historic role. There is just no two ways about it,” he said.

Odierno, an early proponent of the surge, implemented it as the corps commander in Iraq from December 2006 to March 2008, which Gates said made him the right person to replace Petraeus.

Gates said the US troops cuts announced by Bush, which will still leave more troops in Iraq than before the surge, were an acceptable risk.

“I think one of the major changes in the debate that we’ve had about Iraq is that now it is about pacing of the drawdowns. I think there should be deference to the commanders in the field on that score,” he said.

Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, the number two US commander in Iraq, said levels of violence have declined by 80 percent over the past year, and that roadside explosions were down by about half.

“Things could happen to turn things around. But I think it continues to move in the right direction,” he told reporters.

But Austin said that if the security situation takes a bad turn and more troops are needed, “then we would ask for those forces.”

“And certainly as we redeploy forces out of theatre on the things that would always be foremost on our minds, if something happens how we can get something back to help us out,” he said.

On Monday, two car bombings in Baghdad’s Karrada district killed 12 people and wounded 32, a sign that insurgents are still capable of launching attacks.

Austin said potential spoilers included Iraq’s delayed provincial elections, tensions over the integration of Sunni anti-Qaeda fighters into the mainstream security forces and the return of renegade Shiite militia commanders.

Gates met Austin and then joined Iraqi commanders, sheikhs and a Sunni anti-Qaeda commander for a discussion about conditions in Baghdad.

He later met Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki but the details of the meeting were not immediately known.

(AFP)