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British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush are drawing up plans to speed up the pullout of coalition forces from Iraq by giving it full control of its own security as soon as possible, the British Times newspaper reported on Monday.
In an urgent attempt to show that there is an "exit strategy," the United States, Britain and other coalition countries would help Iraq to create an army, police force, civil defense corps, intelligence services and border police force, the paper said.
According to the report, the new strategy discussed by senior officials in Washington and London over the weekend came as both countries accepted that Iraq should be given full sovereignty on July 1.
"We are not about to cut and run. But the aim is to have a strategy which enables the Iraqis to take control as quickly as possible and allows us to leave as soon as possible," the paper quoted a senior British official as saying.
The "gear change" came after the United States, Britain, Italy and Japan said they would pull their troops out of Iraq, if asked by a new Iraqi government.
The report comes as head of the Iraqi Governing Council Abdul Zahra Othman Mohammad, also known as Izzedin Salim, was killed on Monday in a car bombing at a checkpoint outside the coalition headquarters in central Baghdad.
On the bomb attack, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "What this shows is the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from the occupiers to the Iraqi people and that these are enemies of Iraqi people themselves."
The assassination was a "serious blow" to political progress in Iraq that must not be allowed to obstruct the handover of power to an Iraqi government on June 30, the BBC quoted Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the British opposition Liberal Democratic Party, as saying.
(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2004)
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