Rumsfeld Urges Iraqi Leaders
Not to Purge Security Forces
Unusual Warning Reflects
WorryOver Inflaming Insurgency
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 13, 2005; Page A12BAGHDAD,

April 12 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a sharp intervention in Iraqi government-building, urged the country's new Shiite and Kurdish leaders Tuesday against carrying out a broad purge of the security forces.Rumsfeld's warning, delivered during a surprise visit to meet with President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and others, broke from a hands-off political approach observed by President Bush and his aides since the run-up to the Jan. 30 national elections.

"We have an opportunity to continue to make progress politically, economically. . . . Anything that would delay that or disrupt that as a result of turbulence, or lack of confidence or corruption in government, would be unfortunate,"

Rumsfeld told reporters here.Rumsfeld's mission and message revealed the depth of U.S. concern that Iraq's newly empowered Shiite Muslim majority may go too far in expelling former enemies from the military and police, potentially decimating the armed forces rebuilt by the United States and inflaming the insurgency, American officials said.

During the secretary's visit, two car bombings killed at least 10 people in Iraq's north, and deadly firefights continued near an embattled Marine border post near Syria, underscoring the vulnerability of gains in security since the confidence-building January elections.

WONT TAKE THEM LONG TO LEARN FROM THE BUSH
ADMINISTRATION, CORRUPTION IS THEIR MOTTO

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45577-2005Apr12.html?referrer=email