BAGHDAD, Feb 2 (AFP) - Iraqi President Ghazi Al-Yawar said Tuesday it would be "complete nonsense" to ask US and other foreign troops to leave the country now.
But Yawar said US forces could start to leave by the end of the year and Iraqi army chief of staff General Babakir Zebari said they could also be withdrawn from Iraqi cities within a year.
Iraqi and US leaders have emphasised that Iraq remains too dangerous to consider setting a withdrawal timetable. Much of the country is threatened by an insurgency which has left thousands dead over the past year.
It would be "complete nonsense to ask the troops to leave in this chaos and this vacuum of power," Yawar told a press conference.
But he added: "By the end of the year I believe we could see the beginning of a reduction in foreign troops."
There are about 170,000 foreign troops in Iraq, with about 150,000 Americans, who led the March 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
The president said there had been "some mistakes" by the multi-national force "but I think all in all it was a positive contribution by foreign forces in Iraq."
The presence of the US military in Iraq is one of the key disputes that Sunni Muslim religious leaders have with the interim government and led to their call to boycott Sunday's historic election.
Yawar said he had been in "indirect talks" with the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which groups many of Iraq's Sunni clerics, who have demanded a timetable for a US military withdrawal, before the election.
The association's boycott call had a chilling effect at the polls on Sunni Muslim turnout.
On Tuesday Yawar appealed for them and other Sunnis to join negotiations on Iraq's political future, even if they boycotted the vote.
"I think they are mature enough to realise this is a political process that is evolving. I think for the time being we still have to work on a dialogue with them," he said.
Yawar said Iraq's security was till too precarious to set a withdrawal timeline now.
"We hope that they (the Sunnis) will be part of the process. I will personally invite them again, and again and again, to get involved in the discussions for the constitution," he said.
The head of the Iraqi army gave a very cautious assessment of when US forces will be able to leave.
"In six months, or maybe at the end of the year, the construction of the Iraqi army will be finished and our forces will be capable of guaranteeing security," said the general.
Zebari had told AFP last week he envisioned US troops out of the cities and scaled back to even one or two bases by the end of the year.
A senior US military commander in Iraq predicted a scaling back of coalition forces in the south by the summer and in trouble spots north and west of Baghdad taking place late in 2005 and carrying on into 2006.
"It will take longer in the Sunni areas to begin let the Iraqi brigade commander manage the insurgency in his piece of terrain," the commander said on condition of anonymity.
"It'll happen in some places in this country as early as the summer and it'll move into the fall and into 06."
Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan said a withdrawal would be "very dangerous."
"The American forces cannot leave Iraq now. They will leave when security is stabilised and there is a strong army and police force," the minister told a press conference.
US President George W. Bush has also rejected demands in the United States for a deadline for seeing American troops back home.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday: "Timetables can send a message to terrorists that all they have to do is wait, and they can plan and coordinate attacks around that timetable."
02/01/2005 16:31 GMT - AFP