US military and civilian officials have identified 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be pacified before nationwide elections can be held in January, the New York Timeshas reported.
Recent operations to stamp out unrest in Tal Afar, Samarra and the area south of Baghdad are the first signs of a new, six-pronged strategy for Iraq that has been approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the Timessaid today.
Places specifically being looked at, according to unnamed administration officials, include Falluja, Ramadi and the northern Babil Province.
Civilians involved in the process also told the Timesthat the new approach was formulated in part to counter criticism from President George W. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, that the administration has no plan for Iraq.
According to the newspaper, for each of the cities identified as guerrilla strongholds or vulnerable to falling into insurgent hands, a set of measurements was created to track whether the rebels' grip was being loosened by initiatives of the new Iraqi government.
Part of the criteria includes the numbers of Iraqi security personnel on patrol, voter registration, economic development and health care.
For each city, a timeline was established for military action to establish Iraqi local control if purely political steps by the central government proved insufficient.
A senior administration official told the newspaper that it was "working on them by population size, by importance to the election." The ultimate objective was to make sure that the main Sunni Muslim cities could take part in free elections.
The military plan contained options to reduce the 138,000 American forces in Iraq by brigade-size increments of roughly 5,000 troops beginning next year, if the security situation improves and Iraqi forces can maintain order.