TOKYO - Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said Saturday Iraq's national armed forces were not yet ready to maintain stability in the war-torn country because of a lack of training and the problem of insurgents penetrating the military and police.
Hashemi said a quick pullout of US-led coalition troops would not benefit Washington until Iraqi forces were well enough trained to take their place.
Hashemi said the Iraqi armed forces would need no more than 18 months to prepare for a systematic withdrawal of coalition forces.
"Many of the Democrats are now pushing the White House for a quick withdrawal from Iraq. This is not going to benefit either the American or Western interest as well as the Iraqi interest," said the Iraqi politician, who is currently visiting Tokyo.
The security vacuum "could happen immediately after the (quick) pullout of the coalition troops," he told reporters at a news conference.
Asked how long his country would need to reform the national security forces, he said: "Let's say one year, in fact, one year, one and a half years, not more than that."
The US House of Representatives Friday voted to impose an August 2008 deadline to pull combat troops out of Iraq, prompting a veto threat and furious rebuke from President George W. Bush.
After winning back control of Congress in an election fuelled by public anxiety over Iraq, the Democrats are eager to ratchet up the pressure on Bush and to make life difficult for his Republican allies in Congress, who must answer to voters angry over the war.
The Iraqi vice president, one of two holders of the post, also said his government needs to find ways to "accommodate and encourage" insurgents in its political process, saying not all of them are terrorists.
"We need to amend and rectify the reconciliation project to enable the accommodation of the national resistance of Iraq, which the Western media nominates as an insurgency," Hashemi said.
"Those insurgents are very much convinced about the political process, very much welcome the democracy."
The Sunni leader in the Shiite-led Iraqi administration called for a stronger central government over a federal system, which he said could split the country.
Japan last year ended its historic deployment of troops on a reconstruction mission to Iraq, but continues to provide logistical air support to the US-led coalition and the United Nations.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to extend the air support mission for another two years before it expires in July.
Twenty Iraqis killed in Baghdad bombing
In Iraq, a massive truck bombing killed 20 Iraqis at a police station in Bagdad on Saturday after a suicide bomber drove a lorry packed with bricks into the heavily guarded compound, a security official said.
Sixteen policemen, two detainees in police custody and two civilians were among the dead, while another 26 people were taken to hospital with injuries following the massive blast, the source said on condition of anonymity.
The bomber penetrated the heavily guarded police compound in the southern district of Dura by driving a large lorry weighed down with bricks, raising no suspicion given ongoing construction work at the compound, the official said.
He managed to steer the truck past the first police checkpoint before blowing up both himself and the truck, gouging a giant crater out of the ground just outside the main police station building.
Dura is one of the most volatile districts of Baghdad where Iraqi and US forces have concentrated raids under a massive security operation launched last month to quell the capital.
Another three people were killed and seven others wounded, including two women and a child, in a double mortar attack in the nearby Abu Chir district.
South of Baghdad, five people were killed and 30 others wounded in another truck bomb outside a small Shiite religious site just as prayers were finishing in the mixed sectarian town of Al-Haswa, a police source said.
Shrapnel and debris ripped through local shops in the attack, which was quickly followed by four mortar rounds exploding in the same area.
In insurgency-racked western Iraq, the US military said three militants were killed in an air strike and 12 suspects captured in raids.
The air strike was called in after a fighter detonated a suicide vest, killing himself during a US-led operation to arrest him and another three gunmen in a rural area southeast of Ar-Rutbah, the military said.
After the three "terrorists" escaped in a vehicle, a US warplane carried out an air strike killing all of three inside.
Elsewhere in Al-Anbar, Iraq's desert province that neighbours Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, four Iraqi soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the former rebel bastion of Fallujah, said police Captain Ahmed Faisal.
Iraq probes deputy PM attack as violence rages
Iraq was on Saturday interrogating detained bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubayi over a twin-bomb attack that kept the government's top Sunni Arab in hospital for a second day.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he had ordered a full inquiry into the suicide and car bombing that killed nine people, including Zubayi's brother.
"We have ordered the interior ministry to conduct a detailed investigation and find who is behind the attack," he told state television.
"We have detained several of his security guards. Their interrogation is on," Brigadier General Qassim Musawi, spokesman of a massive security operation designed to quell the sectarian war engulfing Baghdad said.
The authorities were chasing after some clues that may lead to the "criminals who carried out this attack," he said without revealing how many guards were in custody.
Dhafter al-Ani, a member of parliament for the National Concord Front, the main Sunni bloc to which Zubayi belongs, charged that the suicide bomber came from the deputy prime minister's own security detail.
"The suicide bomber was one of his bodyguards and he was recruited by the Islamic State of Iraq. He was not related to Zubayi," he said.
The Islamic State, a Sunni insurgent coalition led by Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, posted a statement on the Internet claiming that it carried out Friday's bombing.
"We pray to God not to save the life of this inferior traitor who sold his religion and his people for a cheap return," it proclaimed on a website used by Islamic militant groups.
The group warned of more strikes on Iraqi government "traitors."
Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi vowed that the authorities would not yield to terrorism following the country's latest high-profile assassination attempt.
"Regardless of what happened, we will continue our struggle to enhance democracy and to ensure stability in my country regardless of the terrorist attacks," he told reporters in Japan.
US soldier killed in Baghdad
Insurgents killed a US soldier in Baghdad as he was conducting a foot patrol as part of the massive security operation in the capital, the military reported on Saturday.
The soldier was killed on Friday when a roadside bomb detonated near him in southern Baghdad, a statement said.
The latest casualty took the military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,229, according to Pentagon.
About 90,000 US and Iraqi troops are currently deployed in Baghdad.
Ban says still considering stepped UN presence in Iraq
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday that an expansion of the world body's presence in Iraq was still on the cards, two days after a blast rattled his news conference in Baghdad and made him flinch.
"We are now considering ... what the UN can do, including the increase of presence of the UN in Iraq and also further assisting the political, economic and social reconstruction," he said.
The UN secretary general was speaking to reporters after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, on the second leg of his first Middle East tour since taking office three months ago.
On Thursday, a mortar shell struck in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone area, a few yards (metres) away from the hall where Ban and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were giving a press conference.
The explosion, which an Iraqi official said was caused by a mortar shell, caused no injuries but sent a shock wave through the room and caused Ban to flinch.
A bomb at the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003 killed 22 people, including top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. The world body's presence in war-torn Iraq has been minimal ever since.
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