US troops to exit Iraq ‘at some point’, says Trump

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Thursday that American troops would leave Iraq but gave no timetable for the withdrawal, as he met the country’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi for the first time in Washington.

The meeting comes with attacks on American targets by pro-Iranian fighters on the rise and the Iraqi government facing calls to expel the roughly 5,000 US troops deployed in the country as part of anti-jihadist efforts.

“So at some point, we obviously will be gone,” Trump said alongside Kadhemi at the White House, adding: “We’ve brought it down to a very, very low level.”

“But we have been taking our troops out of Iraq fairly rapidly, and we look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there. And hopefully Iraq can live their own lives and they can defend themselves,” the US president said, adding that military considerations were on the agenda for his meeting with Kadhemi, who took office in May.

Kadhemi said at the White House that he was “grateful” for US support in the war against the Islamic State jihadist group, which “has built our partnership for the best interests for our nation.”

The US military withdrew from Iraq in late 2011, leaving a small mission attached to the US embassy. But additional American forces were deployed to the country a few years later to support Iraqi forces in their war against IS, which carried out a devastating offensive in the summer of 2014.

Opposition to the US presence remains high among pro-Iranian politicians and their supporters, especially following the US assassination of top Iranian commander General Qasem Soleimani at the beginning of this year in a strike that also killed Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Kadhemi told journalists in Washington that while the war against IS has ended, there is still a threat from sleeper cells.

On the issue of US troops, Kadhemi said: “We definitely do not need combat troops in Iraq, but we do need training and capacity building and security cooperation.”