CAIRO - Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Washington Wednesday to draw up a withdrawal calendar for foreign troops in Iraq, as he wrapped up a two-day visit here.
"There must an agreement on a deadline and conditions for a (foreign) troop withdrawal from Iraq," he told reporters during a joint conference with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak said he did not "believe that the situation will calm down" in Iraq and urged the United States to "redeploy its troops to deserted areas, away from cities where war conditions are always more difficult."
Iraq will "face resistance and violence for a long time to come," he warned as he underscored that Washington's decision to disband Iraq's army and police forces after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein had been "a real catastrophe."
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier this month that his country had no exit strategy from Iraq and any pullout depended on the readiness of Iraqi forces to ensure security.
"We don't really have an exit strategy. We have a victory strategy. We are here for a mission to set the country on the path of democracy, freedom and representative government," he said while on his ninth visit to Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Putin said that the participation of all ethnic groups in Iraq's decision-making bodies and an agreement on the new constitution's principles were essential to stabilizing Iraq.
Expressing concern over "rampant violence" in Iraq, the Russian president hailed the election of former Kurdish fighter and America's longtime ally Jalal Talabani to the presidency earlier this month as the basis of a resolution to the conflict.
Putin and Mubarak said they were in favor of Iraq's "unity, sovereignty and territorial sovereignty" and supported the current political process, in a joint declaration issued at the end of the Russian president's first ever visit to Egypt.
04/27/2005 15:49 GMT