US president Barack Obama has pledged to end combat operations in Iraq by August 31, 2010, ahead of a full pullout by the end of 2011.
Delayed national elections in Iraq will not interfere with US plans to sharply reduce troop levels by late next summer, the Pentagon said on Thursday as defence secretary Robert Gates made a visit to Iraq.
US president Barack Obama has pledged to end combat operations in Iraq by August 31, 2010, ahead of a full pullout by the end of 2011. The US force in Iraq is supposed to be reduced to 50,000 by end of August from around 1,15,000 now.
"General (Ray) Odierno does not anticipate any delay in getting down to 50,000 troops by the end of August 2010," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, who is accompanying Gates to Afghanistan and Iraq, said when asked if the March 7 date for Iraq's parliamentary polls would affect that schedule.
"We've lost about a month of time in there, but that has not created any undue pressures on the drawdown plans that General Odierno has," he said, referring to the US commander in Iraq.
Officials said Gates would meet with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders to discuss the upcoming election and would press for broader Arab-Kurd reconciliation.
Intense bickering among Iraq's rival political factions delayed the vote, Iraq's first national election since 2005, from an original date planned for mid-January.
US officials say the 60-day period after Iraq's election will likely reveal whether the country will tip back into sectarian bloodshed or move toward stability and peace.
Odierno wants to retain a muscular US presence in the country, capable of assisting Iraqi troops or police, until there is clarity about the security situation.
A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the withdrawal schedule was on track and that the removal of US soldiers would accelerate in May.
Under a bilateral security pact signed last year, all US troops must withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.
The date for the end of combat operations is not included in the agreement but was set by Obama as part of a pledge to US voters to end the war in Iraq.
"We're basically on plan," the official said, despite the election delay and a series of bloody attacks this week.
Violence in Iraq has fallen sharply in the past 18 months but a series of car bombs on Tuesday ripped through Baghdad, killing 112 people according to police sources. Health Ministry officials put the death toll at around 77 people.
Morrell said the attack on Tuesday was a "desperate attempt to stay relevant and to try and destabilise the political environment".
"It hasn't worked to date," he said.
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