'Iraqi forces need more guns so US can exit'

London, Jan 18: Iraq's need for US troops could fall in three to six months if the United States equipped Iraqi security forces with sufficient weapons, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in comments published today.

The Iraqi leader admitted mistakes had been made over the hanging of former president Saddam Hussein but denied it had been a revenge killing.

In an interview with the Times newspaper, Maliki was asked how long Iraq would require US forces on the ground.

''If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down,'' the prime minister said, speaking in Baghdad.

''That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them.'' Maliki rejected a comment by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his government was living on borrowed time.

''Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi government or American administration. I don't think we are on borrowed time,'' he said.

''I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don't give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success.'' As for last month's execution of Saddam, whose death was filmed illicitly on cell phones and released over the Internet, Maliki acknowledged it had not gone smoothly.

''Mistakes did happen during the execution. They were not intended. These mistakes did not come from officials but from minor people,'' he said, according to an audio extract of the interview released on the Times Web site.

US President George W Bush said on Tuesday the Iraqi government had fumbled the hanging by making it look like a revenge killing.

Maliki said: ''I would like to correct President Bush that Saddam ... was not subjected to any act of revenge, any physical attack, but it was a judicial process that ended with him executed ... according to Iraqi law.''

REUTERS

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