By NNN-KUNA,
Washington : US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen has said that if current trends continue, he expects to recommend additional US troop withdrawals from Iraq.
During a joint Pentagon press conference with Defence Secretary Robert Gates Wednesday, Mullen, who recently returned from Iraq, said: “I will not go so far as to say that progress in Iraq from a military perspective has reached a tipping point or is reversible. It has not, and it is not”.
But security in Iraq is “unquestionably and remarkably better,” Mullen said. “Indeed, if these trends continue I expect to be able early this fall to recommend to the secretary and the president further troop reductions”.
The US troop surge into Iraq, ordered by President George W. Bush more than 18 months ago, has ended, and a 45-day evaluation period by US General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, has begun.
Gates said officials are looking for ways to send additional US troops to Afghanistan this year, where rising violence and a resurgent Taliban have led to more US casualties in the last two months than were recorded in Iraq during the same period.