May 10, 2009, 15:24 GMT
Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, speaking to reporters in Baghdad after meeting US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi on Sunday, said Iraq no longer needed significant US help to keep the country secure.
'The atmosphere in Iraq today is one of democracy and freedom,' al-Maliki said. 'The security situation has improved. We no longer need a large number of military forces in the cities we are able to control.'
'Our efforts are now focused on improving our intelligence capabilities. The official withdrawal of US troops will not affect the security situation in Iraq,' al-Maliki said.
Under the terms of a US-Iraqi agreement governing the presence of US forces in Iraq, US soldiers are scheduled to withdraw from Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June, and to withdraw from the country completely by 2011.
Pelosi's visit on Sunday came at the tail of the bloodiest month in Iraq this year. At least 300 people, most of the Shiite Muslims from Baghdad, were killed in a series of bomb attacks over the course of April.
On Sunday morning, police General Jaafar Taama al-Khafaji narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when a car bomb in central Baghdad's al-Andalus Square exploded as his convoy passed by, police said.
The general, who is in charge of the Interior Ministry's traffic department, was wounded in the attack, which police called an assassination attempt, but was expected to survive.
The attempted assassination followed Saturday's fatal shooting of police General Hakim Jassim in the Zubair district of the southern Iraqi city of Basra and the fatal shooting of an off-duty police officer in a central market in the northern city of Mosul.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in March said the Iraqi government might ask US soldiers to stay in the most violence-prone areas of the country past the June deadline, but in more recent comments has said he expects US forces to withdraw on schedule.
'There is no doubt that there are parties that want to disrupt the political process and support terrorism,' al-Maliki said Sunday. 'We are working to strengthen our intelligence services and to develop our security services to shore-up the successes of the national reconciliation process and the national unity government.'
In recent months, senior officials in al-Maliki's government have reached out to former members of the Baath Party, now banned under Iraq's constitution, in an effort to bring them back into the political process.
Pelosi, who earlier met with Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Iyad al-Samarrai to discuss means of strengthening cooperation between the US Congress and the Iraqi parliament, said she looked forward to a more mature relationship between the United States and Iraq following the withdrawal of US forces from Iraqi cities in June.
She pledged renewed US support 'for the Iraqi government in all its efforts to maintain the security, stability and development of the economy.'
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