US military to press for more training of Iraqis

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (Reuters) The Pentagon will press for intensive training of Iraqi forces, not an overhaul of tactics or strategy, as it seeks a solution for a war the United States is not winning, defense officials said.

The call for more training reflects a view among US defense officials in Washington and Baghdad that the military is not the problem in Iraq, so any new Iraq policy from the White House should be weighted toward political, diplomatic and economic strategy shifts, those officials argue.

The military piece needs adjustment only, they say.

''We're looking at greater numbers of trainers,'' said one military official. ''That's where our adjustment is needed.'' Another defense official said the military's recommendations for Iraq would include the set of policies now in effect. The change, according to that official, will be in the priority placed on -- or weight given to -- each policy.

While Pentagon officials regularly say Iraq's crisis will not be solved militarily, the US military has so far failed in much of the country to establish lasting security that many see as a prerequisite for political and economic progress.

The war, in which nearly 3,000 US service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, helped drive President George W Bush's Republicans out of power in recent elections and led him to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Pentagon chief.

Still, a call for massaging current military policy, rather than replacing it, would be in line with a view from the new defense secretary, Robert Gates, that there are no new ideas on Iraq.

''The list of tactics, the list of strategies, the list of approaches, is pretty much out there,'' Gates told senators this month.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Gates has not publicly discussed his recommendations and Bush is not due to announce his new Iraq strategy until next month.

SURGE, TRAIN OR BOTH? Military options on the table include a short-term increase, or ''surge,'' of as many as 20,000 to 30,000 US troops in Iraq. The US force level there now stands at 134,000.

Increased training is also part of the package of military policy adjustments to be considered, and it's one favored by commanders, according to military officials.

Some defense officials say the surge option satisfies political interests more than military ones. US commanders worry that adding boots on the ground in Baghdad will detract from their efforts to push Iraqis to take control of security.

Defense analysts also say there is little reason to believe 30,000 more troops will have any long-term impacts on security, given that earlier increases had no discernible effect.

Commanders emphasized the importance of stepped-up training to Gates when the former CIA director visited the war zone last week. The commander for the US Army's largest unit of embedded trainers, Army Lt. Col. Bob Morschauser, told Gates the training arrangement with the Iraqi army should expand.

Morschauser said his unit, which includes 400 soldiers working and living within an Iraqi battalion, should be the model for training because it has yielded improvements in Iraqis' tactics, technique and confidence.

Larger training teams like Morschauser's may be critical, said Loren Thompson, analyst at the Lexington Institute.

But nothing will be effective without a longer-term view, he and other analysts said.

Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said ''no one has yet begun to describe how any variant of such strategies can credibly take less than six months, or why it may well require over a year.'' REUTERS LL RK2150