Rumsfeld: Iraq 'not fully secure'

How long troops stay in Iraq is 'not knowable'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has held talks about the future of Iraq and Afghanistan during a stopover visit to the UK.

Following talks with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, he warned that military efforts in Iraq were not completely over.

He also said he hoped the United Nations would play a role in the future of the country.

Mr Hoon said the US-led forces in Iraq "anticipated" finding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but it would take time.

Mr Rumsfeld, who was ruffled by some questions from the media, said it would be "a terrible mistake to think that Iraq is a fully secure, fully pacified environment".

"It is not," he said.

"It is dangerous. There are people who are rolling hand grenades into compounds.

"There are people that are shooting people. It is not finished. We ought not to leave the world with the impression that it is."

Other countries

He added that the continuing global war on terrorism was "a serious battle that the people of the world had to face".

He said it was "not knowable" how long US troops would have to stay in Iraq.

We have always made clear that the effort to locate and precisely identify weapons of mass destruction would take some time

Geoff Hoon
UK defence secretary

"What we do know is that we will have as many forces in the country as is necessary to see that it is a sufficiently secure and permissive environment so that the humanitarian and reconstruction work can go forward," he said.

"And so the Iraqi people can fashion some sort of interim authority and ultimately a final authority."

He said the numbers that it would require depended on how many other countries would be coming in to participate.

Mr Rumsfeld said 65 nations had been involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and representatives of 16 of these met Mr Hoon in the UK this week.

The US defence chief said the coalition forces had been in contact with the United Nations and he suspected there would be more intensive negotiations about what role the UN may or may not wish to play.

"Personally I hope they do play a role," he said.

Weapons search

Mr Hoon said the effort to locate and precisely identify weapons of mass destruction would take some time.

"We were well aware in the course of the UN inspections of the determined efforts by the regime to dismantle weapons, to scatter them around Iraq, to hide them," he said.

"Now that we have the co-operation of certain individuals involved in those programmes, we can anticipate that success."

Mr Rumsfeld, who left for the US after the press conference, defended coalition tactics when asked why Iraq's oil ministry in Baghdad had been given military protection while museums, school and hospitals were looted during the war.

He said air commanders had made efforts to protect such civilian sites from aerial attack and other decisions were made by commanders on the ground.

"I suspect there has never been a more precise campaign than the one that has just been executed in Iraq," he said.

"They went about their business in an excellent manner."