BAGHDAD - U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday he backed a brief pause in U.S. troop reductions from Iraq once an initial pullout of five combat brigades has been completed in July.
Troop levels in Iraq are a big U.S. political issue, particularly in a presidential election year. Both leading Democrats want a swift withdrawal, while Republicans have said U.S. commanders should decide when it is safe to pull out.
"I think that the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," Gates told reporters in Baghdad, endorsing publicly for the first time an idea mooted by the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.
Asked how long this period of evaluation would last, Gates said: "That's one of the things we are still thinking about."
Last year President George W. Bush ordered 30,000 extra troops to Iraq to curb rampant sectarian violence between the Shi'ite Muslim majority and Sunni Arabs that had taken the country to the brink of civil war.
But U.S. force levels have begun to drop because of improvements in security and as more Iraqi forces are deployed. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be 130,000 by July, the same as before additional deployments began in early 2007.
Petraeus said in a CNN interview late last month he would need some time to "let things settle a bit" after the initial reduction, prompting speculation he wanted to keep about 130,000 troops or more in Iraq well into the second half of the year.
Asked if Petraeus had explained his thinking, Gates said:
"In my own thinking, I had been kind of headed in that direction as well. But one of the keys is ... how long is that period? And what happens after that."
Troop levels are also a challenge for U.S. military chiefs, who have seen their forces severely strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any drawdown in Iraq could reduce that strain.
