British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Wednesday flew into Baghdad vowing that London would never give up the hunt for the killers of the six British troops in Iraq. Straw is the most senior British politician to visit the Iraqi capital since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April.
He was in Iraq to assess the security situation after the deaths of the UK soldiers last week at a civilian police station in Al-Majar-al-Kabir in the south of the country.
While he described the incident as "extremely concerning", he said he believed it was a "relatively isolated" event. He added that British forces would, however, always remember the promise to find the killers. "We are not going to forget," he said.
Straw flew into Baghdad International Airport amid tight security. He was immediately whisked away into the city in a fleet of US Black Hawk helicopters.
Earlier, he had stopped briefly at the British headquarters in Basra to discuss the security situation with the commanding officer of the British Forces in Iraq, Major General Sir Peter Wall.
Straw noted that despite the attack on the troops and a number of other incidents in the American-controlled sector in recent days, there was no question of coalition forces being forced to withdraw.
"People are making a terrible mistake if they think we are going to run away from this. That is not the way the British forces operate," he told reporters travelling on his plane. "We have a responsibility in any event to secure this country."
"We will be staying in Iraq for as long as it takes to support the Iraqi people, to establish representative government and to establish decent social and economic services for the Iraqi people. "There is absolutely no question of those attacks leading to a pull-out.
He acknowledged that there were still elements of the Baath Party and the Fedayeen "operating in a relatively organized way" against coalition forces.
The British minister said that he had not received any request for reinforcements from General Wall.
On his arrival in Baghdad, Straw was flown to see the Baghdad police academy where former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerick is organizing the training of a new Iraqi police force. Straw told a class of some 30 Iraqi recruits: "I know that Baghdad isn't London or New York but bad people are bad people and the lessons of our policing are ones that can be transferred."
He was then taken for talks with the US head of the civilian administration, Paul Bremer. He was also meeting local Iraqi political leaders to discuss the creation of a new constitution. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
