BASRA, Iraq, March 24 (UPI) -- The Iraqi prime minister met with senior ministers in Basra Monday to examine the security situation in the southern province.
Nouri al-Maliki met with various security ministers in Basra following plans to reorganize and strengthen Iraqi security forces there, Voices of Iraq reported Monday.
"Iraq's security forces would be restructured and intensified in Basra with direct supervision from the prime minister, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, with the aim of confronting groups involved in sabotage in the city," the spokesman for the Iraqi government, Ali al-Dabbagh, said.
VOI sources reported a massive military contingent in Basra Monday and witnesses reported several U.S. planes entering Basra International Airport.
British officials, who handed over control of Basra to Iraqi security forces in December, reiterated their intention to stay out of day-to-day operations except at the request of the Iraqi government.
"British forces have no plans to enter Basra at the present time. All 4,100 British troops are inside the British base in the Basra International Airport," a spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq said.
The British Sunday Mirror reported top U.S. officials were urging their British counterparts in Basra to stage their own "surge" to quell the increase in violence reported in Basra.
"The feeling is that if southern Iraq is hugely unstable it will affect the success of the surge in the north and destabilize the whole country," sources told the Mirror.
