Reuters, Washington, September 10, 2009 – The United States expects to keep to its plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within a year, despite a spate of recent bomb attacks in Iraq, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday.
’During this year we’ll insure that our troops are withdrawn on schedule, by the president’s timetable,’ U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In their place would be a ’strong healthy relationship between the U.S. and Iraq,’ he said.
U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein and 130,000 troops still remain to help secure the country and train Iraqi forces. President Barack Obama has set a deadline of August 2010 for the removal of U.S. combat forces and all American troops are to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.
Some 4,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions displaced in the last six years.
Hill said August 19 bombings that killed nearly 100 people at the Iraqi finance and foreign ministries had been ’particularly horrifying’ but he believed the Iraqi people rejected a new cycle of violence.
’The bombings in recent months show that we still have to deal with Al Qaeda in Iraq that tries to rekindle violence,’ said Hill, who has been ambassador since April. ’To the great credit of the Iraqi people, they have not risen to the bait.’
Earlier on Thursday a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into a Kurdish village in northern Iraq, killing at least 20 villagers.
Iraq needs to focus on its economy in the near term as much as its political and security situation, Hill said. But he did not expect the oil-rich country to pass a long-awaited law on hydrocarbons until after national Iraqi elections early next year.

IRAN DISSIDENTS
The United States is monitoring the status of Iranian dissidents who were arrested in Iraq in July when Iraqi security forces moved into an Iranian exile camp, Hill said.
He said U.S. officials had sought and received assurances from Iraq that the 36 detainees would be treated humanely and not sent back to Iran.
’We have made it very clear to the Iraqi government, that we are interested in the well being of these people, the preservation of their human rights; that they should not be forcibly repatriated to Iran,’ Hill said.
Residents of Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border say the Iraqi government killed at least 7 people when security forces moved into the facility on July 28, an incident that raises concerns about the dwindling U.S. influence in Iraq. Thirty-six camp residents were arrested by Iraqi police on charges of rioting.
As Hill spoke, some two dozen demonstrators wearing T-shirts that declared ’Free Ashraf Hostages’ sat quietly behind him in the House hearing room.
Camp Ashraf is home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Iraq and Iran.
But the U.S. military had awarded the 3,500 camp residents protected status after they agreed to surrender weapons in 2004. They were protected by the U.S. military until the facility was transferred to Iraqi jurisdiction in January.