LONDON, May 22 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on insurgents in Iraq to lay down their arms and engage in the political process, during a visit to the country Monday.
While he declined to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops, he and new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said they hoped Iraqi forces would be responsible for much of the country's "territorial security" by the end of 2006.
Hailing the formation of the new Iraqi government, Blair said there was now "no excuse" for the bloodshed that has wracked the country for over three years to continue. This was a "new beginning" which would allow Iraqis to "take charge of their own destiny," he added
He was speaking in Baghdad after talks with al-Maliki, who took office on Saturday after months of inter-party wrangling.
The British leader, whose trip to Iraq was kept secret for security reasons, said it had taken three years of struggle to reach the formation of a government.
"For the first time, we have a government of national unity that crosses all boundaries and divides, that is there for a four-year term and (was) directly elected by the votes of millions of Iraqi people."
"It has been longer and harder than any of us would have wanted it to be, but this is a new beginning and we want to see what you want to see, which is Iraq and the Iraqi people to able to take charge of their own destiny and write the next chapter of Iraqi history themselves," he said.
Blair refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of Britain's 8,000 troops, saying the security handover needed to be governed by conditions on the ground. But he made clear that he wanted it to happen as quickly as was possible without further jeopardizing security.
"We want to move as fast as we can, but it has to be done in a way that protects the Iraqi people," he said.
Blair insisted that with a sovereign Iraqi government now in place there was "no vestige of an excuse for anyone to carry on with terrorism or bloodshed."
"If the worry of people is the presence of the multinational forces, it is the violence that keeps us here. It is the peace that allows us to go."
However al-Maliki, who has pledged to use "maximum force" to restore security to the country, said he anticipated that international forces would handover control in two of the more peaceful provinces as early as next month, with Iraqi forces taking over security responsibility in all of the country with the exception of Baghdad and the northern province of Anbar by the end of this year.
His remarks were echoed in a joint statement released by the two premiers, which stated: "The Iraqi prime minister said that his government will, in the weeks ahead, work with the multinational force on the details of the transition to Iraqi control. This process of transition will start in some provinces in the coming months, and by the end of this year responsibility for much of Iraq's territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control."
Meanwhile, a senior British official traveling with Blair told a press briefing that the full withdrawal of all multi-national troops should be accomplished within four years, with several provinces seeing a handover to civilian control during the summer.
He stressed, however, that this was not a timetable for troop withdrawal, and would not necessarily herald the speedy return of large numbers of British troops.
"The aim is to take Iraq to a position where the multinational force is able to withdraw during (the government's) period in office," the official said. "During the four years, the present role and structure of the multinational force will change and come to an end."
Blair will hope that the security handover will be largely completed before his own departure from office, to enable him to claim success in Iraq as his political legacy.
Like U.S. President George W. Bush, he has seen his popularity at home plummet because of his role in the conflict; a YouGov poll for the Telegraph newspaper earlier this month found that only 26 percent of voters were satisfied with his performance, making him the most unpopular Labor prime minister in modern times.
In stinging contrast to Bush and Blair's words of optimism, Monday media reports said at least 11 deaths in shootings and bomb attacks across the country. One of the reported victims was a member of the new government, the director general of the youth and sports ministry, Hamid Hassan, who was shot dead on his way to work in southern Baghdad.
Al-Maliki, meanwhile, denied that Iraq was now in a state of civil war, insisting that the insurgents were "groups committing terrorism" rather than sectarian militia.
However, sectarian tensions threaten Iraq's future even at the highest levels. When al-Maliki vowed during a parliamentary session Saturday to "fight terrorism," 15 Sunni parliamentarians walked out, some of whom were members of the Iraqi Accordance Front, a party represented in the cabinet with four ministers.
One of the Front's Sunni deputies later held a press conference questioning the new prime minister's anti-terror agenda on the basis that it did not distinguish between "the resistance, which plays a heroic role for the sake of liberating Iraq, and acts of violence that all reject."
