U.S., allies will leave Iraq if requested

The United States and its allies in Iraq said yesterday they will pull their forces out of the country after the end of the occupation on June 30 if the interim government asks them to do so, but they expressed confidence that will not happen.

“Were this interim government to say to us, ‘We really think we can handle this on our own and it will be better if you were to leave,’ we will leave,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters after meeting with the foreign ministers of the world’s seven leading industrial nations and Russia.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked to take the floor after Mr. Powell spoke.

“On the 30th of June,” he said, “sovereignty transfers to the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government, and were they to ask us to leave, we will leave.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini joined in, saying: “Italy, too, does not intend to remain at all against the wishes of a government, which is a transitory government.”

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said members of her country’s Self-Defense Forces, who are not engaged in military operations, “would go back to Japan if requested.”

But Mr. Powell and his colleagues said such a scenario is not realistic.

“I have no doubt that the interim Iraqi government will welcome the continued presence and operation of coalition military forces,” he said.

In Baghdad yesterday, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer told a delegation from Iraq’s Diyala province that American forces would not stay where they were unwelcome.

“If the provisional government asks us to leave, we will leave,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. “I don’t think that will happen, but obviously we don’t stay in countries where we’re not welcome.”

The possible withdrawal of coalition troops — even as a hypothetical option — has been a matter of heated debate and a source of confusion in the Bush administration, which does not envision leaving Iraq at least for several years.

In testimony before the House International Relations Committee on Thursday, Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, seemed to suggest that the U.S. forces would quit if asked by the new government but later said they would not.

Mr. Powell’s strong statement yesterday signaled that most serious candidates for the interim government considered by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi are inclined to allow the multinational force to remain in the country.

Mr. Brahimi, currently in Iraq, is expected to present a list of nominees in about 10 days. The Bush administration, which sent Robert Blackwill, a senior National Security Council officials in charge of Iraq policy, to consult with Mr. Brahimi on a daily basis, has said it will accept the envoy’s recommendations.

The status of the U.S.-led forces in Iraq between June 30 and elections in late January emerged as the main point of friction between Washington and U.N. Security Council members that opposed the war last year, such as France and Russia.

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