Suddenly, a number of American officials, from Washington to Baghdad, have announced that the United States would withdraw its troops from Iraq if a new interim government asks them to.

But Iraqis do not take these announcements seriously, and many of them doubt the aim of the announcements, which came after the scandal of torture, abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

"It would be naive to imagine that, for Washington knows very well that the coming government, which it would form, is a government to run administration in the country and has no authorities to take such important decisions as asking 150,000 American soldiers all over the country to leave," said Salam Shamaa, a journalist.

"Iraqis welcome the withdrawal of the American forces, but Washington does not really want that, and neither do many other Iraqi politicians in the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC)," said Hameed Mahdi, a professor at Baghdad University.

"The security vacuum that the American forces would leave behind would make Iraq a theatre for looters and gangsters," he emphasized.

The American announcements started with Paul Bremer, top US civil administrator of Iraq, who said Friday that it is certainly not possible to stay in a country where they are not welcomed.

And subsequently, the spokesman for the White House said that if an Iraqi sovereign government did not want the US troops, they would not be there, but he confidently expected that they would be there according to an invitation by the government.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in similar announcement Friday in Washington that the American forces would leave if the interim government asked them to and that the security situation could be handled.

"We're there to support the Iraqi people and protect them and the new government," Powell told a press conference with his counterparts from other Group of Eight industrialized nations preparing for an economic summit next month.

He noted that he had no doubt the new Iraqi government will welcome the US troops' presence.

But if the new government says it could handle security in the war-torn country, "we would leave," Powell said.

US President George W. Bush has vowed that the American forces would not escape from Iraq because of the continuous attacks of the resistance against the American troops.

Local observers said the density of the announcements reveal the American desire to contain the anger of the Iraqi people after the publication of the photos of torture and abuse, and to reassure the American voters in the presidential elections due in November that Bush does not want to put more American soldiers in danger.

The weekly magazine Alaan noticed earlier that the Americans changed the use of "sovereignty transfer" to "power transfer" and that Powell had said the coming government would not practice full sovereignty.

The problem of the current power-transfer plan in Iraq is that there is not a specific date of the foreign troops leaving the country, observers said.

The decisions are expected to be taken by three Iraqi governments that will take power during the coming 18 months -- the interim government to take over power on June 30, the interim government to be chosen by an elected National Assembly in January next year, and the fully elected government at the beginning of 2006.

Source: Xinhua