80% of Iraqis want US to stop patrolling cities

Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organisation.

Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.

In interviews in Baghdad and six other cities, which were completed last Tuesday, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies also found that pressure is likely to mount on the US and Britain to pull out of Iraq as soon as the country has an elected government in January.

This would be almost a year earlier than the end of the mandate which Washington and London got from the United Nations security council recently. That named December 2005 as the mandate's limit.

The survey looked ahead to the election campaign which will start this autumn and found that parties that promised to demand the immediate departure of foreign forces would have a huge head start.

Forty-three per cent of those polled said they would be most likely to vote for a party which called for foreign forces to leave.

Asked if they would support a party which wanted foreign forces to stay until Iraq's army and police were adequately trained and equipped to face threats of violence, only 16% said yes.

Although the collapse of security is the population's top concern, most of those surveyed felt that the problem would be best handled by Iraqi forces and that the presence of foreign armies attracted more violence.

Almost 70% said that if foreign armies remained in Iraq after an elected government took office in January attacks against Iraqi police and government officials would increase.

The Iraq Centre for Research conducts monthly polls and is approved by the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Its latest results were handed to CPA officials on Sunday, the eve of their departure.

The finding that 41% would feel safer without any foreign forces in Iraq is similar to the results for April, but lower than the 55% who felt that way last month. The change may be due to the shock of recent car bombings and assassinations.

Dr Sadoun al Duleimi, who has a PhD in social psychology from Keele University and directs the polling centre, said yesterday: "It's probably because of the large number of recent explosions and attacks on the police.

"Another reason may be that at first Iraqis felt the new government was really going to be an Iraqi government of technocrats and experts who would handle the country's problems with an iron hand.

"When they see it's an extension of the previous governing council, some people go back to accepting coalition forces on the basis that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."