US set to withdraw 15,000 of its troops

THE United States yesterday announced that it was pulling 15,000 troops out of Iraq as early election results from last Sunday’s poll showed a strong lead for candidates backed by Shiite Muslim clerics.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy US defence secretary, said numbers would be reduced to 135,000 and he predicted that whole areas of the country would be successfully handed over to Iraqis during the coming six months.

"I think we’ll be able to come down to the level that was projected before this election," he said.

Mr Wolfowitz told a Senate committee that allied forces expect to have trained and equipped 200,000 Iraqi troops and police by October.

Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the focus would now be on training Iraqi security forces, although he warned complete US withdrawal was not in sight.

"In this new phase, the priority will be on increasing our efforts to help the Iraqis assume more responsibility for providing security for their country," he said.

With counting continuing from the weekend poll, the latest figures released show a convincing lead for Shia parties with close ties to Iran. The current prime minister, Ayad Allawi, is trailing in a distant second place.

A partial tally of votes based on about 3.3 million votes cast at 35 per cent of the country’s polling stations, and representing partial returns from ten of Iraq’s 18 provinces, showed the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite-dominated coalition, won more than 2.2 million votes, with Mr Allawi’s ticket collecting 579,700 votes.

All ten of the provinces involved have heavy Shiite populations, with no returns yet released from mainly Sunni provinces north and west of the capital.

The returns represent 15 per cent of the votes cast in Basra province and 80 per cent tallied in the less densely populated Muthanna province.

In Baghdad yesterday an Italian journalist became the latest to be abducted, and the first since the election.

Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist with communist Rome newspaper Il Manifesto, was snatched from the street as she conducted interviews near Baghdad University.

Gunmen pulled up alongside her vehicle, forced her driver and an Iraqi journalist out at gunpoint and drove off with Ms Sgrena, according to Iraqi police.

Meanwhile, France yesterday confirmed that US forces were holding three Frenchmen captured fighting with insurgents in Iraq last November.