Violence not to affect US troops pullout, Iraqi PM
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Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki said on Wednesday that the latest deadly bombings in Baghdad will not change the timeline of U.S. troops withdrawal from Iraq.
"No change on the U.S. troops withdrawal, because there is a timetable and the American side repeatedly announced their commitment to their troops' withdrawal," Maliki told a news conference.
Since August, Baghdad witnessed three coordinated high-profile attacks targeting government buildings in central of the riverside city that killed and wounded thousands of Iraqis.
The attacks raised concerns about the ability of Iraqi security forces to contain violence several months after the United States pulled its combat troops from the Iraqi cities and towns and to complete the pullout by the end of 2011, in line with a security agreement inked late last year between Baghdad and Washington.
Maliki said the latest attacks targeted the country's political process in an attempt to bring back Saddam Hussein's loyalists and Islamic extremists.
In the meanwhile, Maliki said the security situation has now improved in Iraq despite the deadly attacks, compared with that after the invasion in 2003 until 2007, noting that the security improvement resulted from proper strategy.
"We haven't gained better security by chance, what we have was achieved by adopting proper security strategy, which started by implementing the plan of law enforcement and then expanded to the national reconciliation in addition to other measures," Maliki said.
He said his government is concentrating developing intelligence service by activating the role of the citizens in reporting about the terrorist activities.
He confirmed taht his government offered a reward of 100 million Iraqi dinars (about 90,000 U.S. dollars) to anybody who provides information about car bombs or about those who are behind the terrorist acts.
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