Iraq plans to dig trenches around Baghdad

NEW YORK: Iraqi officials plan to dig a series of trenches around Baghdad in the coming weeks to seal it off and control movement into and out of the city, The New York Times reported on Saturday.   

"We're going to build a trench around Baghdad" -- a distance measuring about 60 miles (97 km) -- "so we can control the exits and entrances so people will be searched properly," Brig.-Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf told the Times on Friday in an interview.   

"The idea is to get the cars to go through the 28 checkpoints that we set up," the newspaper quoted him as saying.   

US officials have approved of the plan, which has been in the works for weeks, the Times said. It calls for cars to be funneled through the checkpoints along the main arteries leading out from the capital, and for smaller roadways to be closed. The trenches themselves would run through farmland or other open land to prevent evasions of the checkpoints, the newspaper said.   

The Washington Post, quoting a US military spokesman in  Baghdad, said on Saturday that checkpoints would be placed along key arteries in and out of Baghdad to ensure that people move through "predictable paths" that can be controlled.   

Traffic patterns are being studied and if the plan''s outer perimeter is effective some current checkpoints inside the city's borders could be closed to help traffic move along, the report said.   

The Iraqi official said he did not know the expected cost of the ambitious project, which follows a US-backed security programme that set up traffic checkpoints throughout the capital but failed to quell escalating sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.   

In August, a new tactic involved moving troops into trouble zones and conducting block by block searches before leaving battalions behind to bolster local residents. That program is expanding into eastern neighborhoods, the Times said.   

President Bush said on Friday that the Iraqis were building "a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices," which military officials said Iraq had considered before deciding on the trenches.   

Similar perimeters have been set up around smaller troubled cities such as Falluja, the Times said. And the US military built dirt berms with limited entry points around Samarra in the north and Rawah in the western desert, it said.   

The No. 2 ranking US commander in Iraq, Lt Gen Peter Chiarelli, told the Times that securing Baghdad was a top priority.   

"I'll be perfectly clear with you" our main effort right now is Baghdad," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "It's our focus."