Washington, October 22: The United States is pressing Iraq not to delay parliamentary elections in early January, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday, acknowledging it could affect plans for drawing down US forces.
Doubts about the election timeline rose again Wednesday after the Iraqi parliament failed to reach agreement on an election law because of a stalemate over oil-rich Kirkuk.
Michele Flournoy, US undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers in Washington that failure to resolve the issue within the next week or two would mean the elections would have to be put back until late January.
“In that instance, MNF-I (Multi-National Force-Iraq) would have to engage with the government of Iraq to do some contingency planning on how to secure the elections at a later date and that might well have implications,” she said.
US military commanders plan to keep 100,000 US troops in Iraq through the elections to provide security but then embark on a fast-paced drawdown that will reduce their numbers to 50,000 by August.
Disruptions in the Iraq drawdown would almost certainly have ripple effects on any plans for a build-up of troops in Afghanistan, currently the subject of intense debate within the administration.
“We have adequate capacity right now to do what we believe, whatever decision the president makes on Afghanistan, within — well within the current drawdown plan for Iraq,” said Vice Admiral James Winnefeld.
But he added that “if you were to keep more forces in Iraq and you plussed-up in Afghanistan, of course, you would be imposing more health of the force risks on the force.”
Flournoy told members of the House Armed Services Committee that “on the ground in Baghdad, here in Washington just yesterday, our focus is on trying to stick to the current election timeline.”
President Barack Obama personally impressed upon Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki “the importance of sticking to the constitutionally specified time line for the Iraqi elections, and we are putting all our diplomatic effort toward that end,” she said.
“That said, of course we will have contingency plans to adjust if necessary. But right now we’re trying to use all our diplomatic and other leverage to try to make sure the elections happen on time.”
In Baghdad, UN special envoy Ad Melkert warned Iraqi members of parliament that the delay in setting the ground rules for the election — only the second since the US-led invasion of 2003 — threatened to undermine the credibility of the process.
–Agencies