80% of Iraqis want US to stop patrolling cities

[kskiska]

Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organisation.

Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.

In interviews in Baghdad and six other cities, which were completed last Tuesday, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies also found that pressure is likely to mount on the US and Britain to pull out of Iraq as soon as the country has an elected government in January.

This would be almost a year earlier than the end of the mandate which Washington and London got from the United Nations security council recently. That named December 2005 as the mandate's limit.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1249700,00.html