The Little Brown Reader

Powell Says Troops Would Leave Iraq if New Leaders Asked

Powell Says Troops Would Leave Iraq if New Leaders Asked (washingtonpost.com)

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, joined by the foreign ministers of nations making key contributions of military forces in Iraq, emphatically said yesterday that if the incoming Iraqi interim government ordered the departure of foreign troops after July 1, they would pack up without protest.

"We would leave," Powell said, noting that he was "not ducking the hypothetical, which I usually do," to avoid confusion on the extent of the new government's authority.

His statement, which was echoed by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy and Japan, and by the U.S. administrator in Iraq, came one day after conflicting testimony on Capitol Hill by administration officials on the issue. Testifying before the House International Relations Committee on Thursday, Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman appeared to say that the interim government could order the departure of foreign troops, only to be contradicted by Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, sitting at his side, who asserted that only an elected government could do so. Iraqi elections are scheduled for January.
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