IRAQ DISPUTES U.S. claim on troops’ stay.

BAGHDAD — Defense Secretary Mark Esper arrived Wednesday in Baghdad, as chaos swirled along the Turkey-Syria border and Iraqi leaders chafed over reports that the U.S. wants to increase the number of troops based in Iraq at least temporarily.

Esper has said that under the current plan, all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the military would continue to conduct operations against the Islamic State group to prevent its resurgence in the region. He later added that the troops would be there temporarily until they are able to go home, but no time period has been set.

He said Wednesday that the U.S. has no plans to leave those troops in Iraq “interminably.”

Iraq’s military, however, said that U.S. troops leaving Syria and heading to neighboring Iraq do not have permission to stay in the country, even as the American forces continue to pull out of northern Syria after Turkey’s invasion of the border region.

“The government has confirmed that it will not grant permission for U.S. forces retreating from Syrian territory to remain in Iraqi territory,” Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said in a statement after a meeting with Esper.

He said Iraq was “taking all international legal measures” over the deployment of U.S. troops.

Iraqi Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari said Wednesday that U.S. forces were only “transiting” through Iraqi territory and would depart within four weeks.

Also this week, President Donald Trump announced an apparent U.S. plan to secure lucrative oil fields in northern and eastern Syria.

Esper told reporters Monday that a force of about 200 U.S. troops would be stationed near the oil fields “to deny access, specifically revenue to the Islamic State and any other groups that may want to seek that revenue to enable their own malign activities.”

But on Wednesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the Syrian government should retain control of all the oil facilities in northeastern Syria, Reuters reported, quoting Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.

Trump ordered the bulk of the approximately 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria to withdraw after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made clear in a phone call that his forces were about to invade Syria to push back Kurdish forces that Turkey considers terrorists. The pullout largely abandons the Kurdish allies who have fought Islamic State militants alongside U.S. troops for several years.

Between 200 and 300 U.S. troops will remain at the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf.

Esper said the troops going into Iraq would have two missions, one to help defend Iraq against a resurgence of Islamic State militants and another to monitor and perform a counter-Islamic State mission.

The U.S. currently has more than 5,000 troops in Iraq, under an agreement between the two countries. The U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011 when combat operations there ended, but they went back in after the Islamic State began to take over large areas of the country in 2014.

The number of American troops in Iraq has remained small because of political sensitivities in the country, after years of what some Iraqis consider U.S. occupation during the war that began in 2003.

Iraqi leaders may privately condone more U.S. troops to battle militants, but worry if it’s widely known that there will be backlash from the citizens.

U.S. troops in Syria fought for five years alongside Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria and succeeded in toppling the rule of the Islamic State there at the cost of thousands of Kurdish fighters’ lives.

Information for this article was contributed by Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press and by Erin Cunningham of The Washington Post.