Troops could occupy Iraq for decades: report

OCCUPYING troops could be embroiled in Iraq for decades, a major report claimed yesterday.

The study said al-Qaida could keep the US tied up in Iraq for many years.

Britain would only withdraw troops in the “highly unlikely” event of a break with Washington.

The Oxford Research Group has studied the latest events in Iraq. It said the war was still in its early stages and was likely to last for decades.

The group says the occupation has been a “gift” to al-Qaida. The terrorist group has won recruits by portraying the US presence as a neo-Christian occupation of a major Islamic state.

Furthermore the report says that ensuring Iraqi security and maintaining a friendly government in Baghdad is an essential part of US security policy even if it requires a permanent military presence.

It says long-term access to Persian Gulf oil is essential to the US because of its increasing dependence on imported oil.

The report says al-Qaida’s use of the occupation tied to the US need to be dominant in the region means the Iraq conflict is still in its very early stages. It warns that a US withdrawal would be a “foreign policy disaster greater than the retreat from Vietnam”.

“Given that the al-Qaida movement and its affiliates are seeking to achieve their aims over a period of decades rather than years, the probability is that, short of major political changes in the USA, the Iraq war might well be measured over a similar time span,” it concludes.

A top US commander has said he has “absolutely no reason” to believe the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, died in a weekend raid in Mosul.

Lieutenant General John Vines, chief of the Multi-National Corps Iraq, confirmed that US officials have the ability to determine if al-Zarqawi was there.

“I am told that there is a DNA database of some of his relatives that is able to be compared against some of those who were killed there,” Gen Vines said.

Eight insurgents and four Iraqi policemen died in the raid by US and Iraqi forces, including three insurgents who blew themselves up to avoid capture. The allied forces mounted an assault on a house in Mosul that was believed used by members of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraq’s foreign minister has said that tests were being done to determine if al-Zarqawi was one of those killed.

Meanwhile, a report has said that scores of billions of dollars will be paid by Iraq to foreign oil companies under long-term contracts.

The report estimated multinationals would be paid between $74 billion and $194 billion with rates of return of between 42% and 162% under proposed production-sharing agreements (PSAs).

Researcher Greg Muttitt, of social and environmental justice campaign group Platform which published the report, said: “The form of contracts being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available. Iraq’s oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people not foreign oil companies.”

The report, entitled Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth, said the majority of Iraqis were against the large-scale involvement of foreign companies.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber attacked a police patrol yesterday in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 17 people. Three US soldiers died in two separate attacks, pushing the American death toll in Iraq to 2,100.