In another step towards sovereignty, Iraq was yesterday also handed control of Basra airport by British forces. -- PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD - THE American military in Iraq came under Iraqi authority yesterday for the first time since the US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, a milestone in the war-weary country's path to restoring sovereignty.
The US force in Iraq, now more than 140,000 strong, had operated since 2003 under a United Nations Security Council resolution which expired at midnight on New Year's Eve.
As of Jan 1, troops will now operate with authority granted by the Iraqi government in a pact agreed by Washington and Baghdad.
In another step towards sovereignty, Iraq was yesterday also handed control of Basra airport by British forces, who have been using the facility as their main military base in southern Iraq since the 2003 war.
The transfer of authority was formalised in a ceremony which saw the US hand over security control of the heavily fortified Green Zone, symbol of the American occupation, to Iraq.
At the ceremony at the former palace of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said: 'A year before it was just a dream to think about foreign troops withdrawing from Iraq but today that dream has become a reality.'
As the Iraqi flag was hoisted at the entrance to the sandstone palace in central Baghdad, he added: 'The palace is the sign of Iraqi sovereignty and it is a message to all Iraqis that our sovereignty has returned.'
He proposed that Jan 1 be declared a national holiday to commemorate what he called 'Sovereignty Day'.
Under the terms of an agreement signed with Washington in November, US troops officially decamped from the 14.5sq km Green Zone located on the banks of the Tigris in central Baghdad.
However, US troops will continue to play an advisory role to the Iraqi military.
The pact gives US troops three years to leave the country, revokes their power to detain Iraqis without an Iraqi warrant, and subjects contractors and off-duty American troops to Iraqi law.
'The role of the coalition forces (in the Green Zone) will be secondary, centred on training Baghdad brigade troops to use equipment to detect explosives and advising Iraqi forces,' said Mr Qassim Moussawi, spokesman of Iraqi forces in Baghdad.
American troops across Iraq remain under US command but their operations must be authorised by a joint US-Iraqi committee.
They are to leave the streets of Iraqi towns and cities by the middle of this year and withdraw from the country by the end of 2011.
Other US-allied troops, including 4,100 from Britain, are to leave Iraq within seven months.
On Wednesday, US officials finished vacating the palace in the centre of the Green Zone that had been the seat of US power in Iraq since 2003.
Some 15,000 prisoners held at US military detention camps must now be charged with crimes under Iraqi law or, according to the security pact, gradually let go.
Iraqi forces take over a dramatically different country from the one ravaged by sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007.
Attacks have dropped sharply, thanks partly to an increase of troops ordered by President George W. Bush in 2007 and also to newfound cooperation from Sunni Arab tribal leaders.
Militants continue to strike, especially with bomb attacks that frequently target civilians.
According to official health ministry figures, 5,379 civilians were killed last year, less than a third of the 16,232 killed in 2007 but still an average of nearly 15 a day.
This month will see provincial elections that US and Iraqi officials bill as a milestone towards democracy.
But Iraq remains deeply scarred by the war. Baghdad neighbourhoods are divided by checkpoints and concrete walls, and millions of people who fled the violence have yet to return home.
