Iraq wants quick US withdrawal

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said at a joint news conference with Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the time has arrived to plan a coordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control throughout the country.

Asked how soon a US withdrawal should happen, he said no exact timetable had been set. "But we confirm and we desire speed in that regard," he said, speaking through a translator. "And this fast pace has two aspects."

First, there must be a quickening of the pace of US training of Iraqi security forces, and second there must be closely coordinated planning between the US-led military coalition and the emerging Iraq government on a security transition, he said.

"We do not want to be surprised by a withdrawal that is not in connection with our Iraqi timing,"' he said.

Speaking earlier with US reporters travelling with Rumsfeld, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, said he believed a US troop withdrawal could begin by spring 2006 if progress continues on the political front and if the insurgency does not expand.

Rumsfeld was planning to get a firsthand look at the training of Iraqi security forces by watching a demonstration by a group of Iraqi special forces soldiers using live ammunition at a training range run by American troops.

Meanwhile, four US soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad, the US military said on Tuesday.

The military said in a statement the incident occurred on Sunday night but gave no further details.

Earlier about 10 gunmen emptied their automatic rifles into a bus carrying Iraqi workers from a factory west of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing up to 17 people, police and hospital sources said.

The group of al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it has killed the two Algerian diplomats it kidnapped last week in Baghdad, according to an Internet statement issued Wednesday.

"Your brothers in the military branch of the al-Qaeda Organis-ation in the Land of Two Rivers on Wednesday June 27 applied the verdict of the Islamic tribunal," said a statement published on an Islamic website whose authenticity could not be verified.