Jafari Offers Security Plan for Iraq Amid Talk of U.S. Pullback

BAGHDAD -- Responding to rising criticism of the government’s failure to provide security after a series of deadly suicide bombings and other attacks, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari announced a new security plan Thursday.

In a rare, lengthy news conference, Jafari promised to better coordinate the work of the ministries of defense and interior, to improve intelligence and protect infrastructure more effectively.

“We will not hesitate in saying this: We are in a state of war,” Jafari said. “It is one of the most dangerous types of war, because it is not a conventional war or a war of borders.”

The announcement comes as U.S. officials have begun to talk more openly about reducing the number of U.S.-led forces in the country and are pushing Iraqi troops to take over more of the job of providing security.

Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who heads the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces, said national units would probably first control the nine southern provinces and the three Kurdish provinces, but he declined to offer a timetable during a commemoration of the deaths of Iraqi soldiers.

Jafari laid out his plan as the government entered the final stage of drafting a constitution, a period that is likely to see an increase in guerrilla violence, American commanders say.

Leaders of Iraq’s major political parties are to gather in Baghdad today to hammer out a compromise among competing political parties. They are expected to meet at least through Aug. 12 and possibly until Aug. 15, when they have said they will submit a draft constitution to the full National Assembly for review, said Laith Kubba, a government spokesman.

Meanwhile, the deaths Wednesday of four more American troops were announced Thursday. One Marine died near Ramadi in western Iraq, hit by small-arms fire. In the capital, three soldiers were killed by a car bomb, bringing the number of American troops killed in a three-day period to 25.

One of the most deadly attacks on U.S. troops occurred Wednesday near the Euphrates River Valley town of Haditha, where 14 soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed when a powerful bomb exploded beneath their amphibious vehicle.

Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, speaking to reporters in Baghdad, insisted that despite the devastating bomb and an ambush that killed six Marines the day before, the fight against insurgents was going well and that the situation was improving with fewer suicide car bombs per day. “There’s a clear indication that the tempo has decreased,” Alston said.

“This is not an expanding insurgency. What we’re seeing is probably the opposite,” he said, but he declined to release any charts or data showing the patterns of recent months.

Insurgents are fighting hard in Haditha and the surrounding valley, Alston said. “This is ground that they need to sustain, and they are being denied that ground.”

However, interviews with Iraqis in the Haditha area suggested that insurgents controlled many parts of the city and residents had fled.

“Many houses that have been left by their owners are being used by fighters in the city,” said a resident, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation. “The fighters are not facing any difficulties when entering the city, although Americans have encircled the city. They come through the river. The same fighters that were fighting in Hit and Qaim are now fighting in Haditha,” he said. The resident said the gunmen were Iraqi, “and there is no sign of [foreign] fighters among them.”

Alston confirmed that there appeared to be many ways to enter Haditha.

Speaking to reporters Thursday in Texas, President Bush urged the families who recently lost sons and husbands to take comfort.

“We’re defeating the terrorists in a place like Iraq so we don’t have to face them here at home. And as well we’re spreading democracy and freedom to parts of the world that are desperate for democracy and freedom,” he said.

In a videotape broadcast Thursday on the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera, Al Qaeda’s purported second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, warned that the United States and Britain would continue to be the targets of terrorist attacks until they withdrew from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. “You will not dream of security until we live it as a reality in Palestine and until all your infidel armies leave prophet Muhammad’s lands,” he declared.

Bush denounced Zawahiri’s declaration as part of a “dark, dim, backward” ideology.

Among the statements Thursday attributed to the group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq was one posted on a website frequently used to convey its messages. It said: “The Islamic Sharia is the right religion and anything else is wrong and rejected, including the constitution. No human being is allowed to legislate laws which are the right of God alone.”

One of the major issues dividing the constitution’s drafters concerns the proper role of Islam and whether Sharia will be the primary source of constitutional law. Such proposals have particularly worried secular women, who fear they will be forced to obey clerical edicts rather than have access to secular courts.

Bush denounced Islamic fundamentalists’ views of women in particular. “They don’t appreciate women. If you don’t agree to their narrow view of a religion ... you’ll be whipped in the public square. That’s their view,” he said.

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A Times special correspondent in Fallouja contributed to this report.