Admitting similar training typically last several months, Kerik regretted: "We don't have that luxury."

WASHINGTON, August 25 (IslamOnline.net) – Facing almost daily attacks against its troops in Iraq and amidst growing political pressures to bring them home, the U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq plan to send 28,000 Iraqis to Hungary for an intensive training course, a leading U.S. newspaper reported Monday. August 25.

American officials had obtained permission from the Hungarian government to set up a large police academy inside an old Soviet military base there, Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City Police commissioner told the New York Times.

He said the academy would be set up in the same site where hundreds of Iraqi volunteers received U.S. military training to join hands in the Iraq invasion.

On February, the Hungarian government allowed the U.S. to train up to 3,000 Iraqi exiles at the base 120 miles south of the capital Budapest, to help the U.S. troops in their invasion of Iraq.

Kerik, who is in charge of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, argued the extraordinary measure was necessary because the existing police academies in Iraq were not large enough to train so many officers in the next several months.

There has been some violence against Iraqis who worked with the Americans, including a bombing in early July near the graduation ceremony for the first class of police recruits that killed seven of them.

But Kerik said the overwhelming reason for planning training outside Iraq was to train police officers as quickly as possible, adding that training them in Iraq's existing police academies would take nearly six years.

"We want to turn Iraqi security over to the Iraqis,… This is the only way to do it quickly," asserted the American official.

He added that Iraqi officers would receive eight weeks of intensive American training in Hungary, which is shorter than most police academies in Western countries that typically last several months.

"We don't have that luxury," Kerik said.

"After the men return from training, they would be given four to six months of on-the-job instruction, similar to the training officers undergo in the United States."

4-month Training

Kerik said he hoped to begin training the first group of 1,500 officers in four months, with 28,000 officers ready to start work in Iraq over the next 18 months.

That would bring the total number of police officers to 65,000 — the number that American officials believe is required to police the country effectively, said the American daily.

Since the end of the war, American administrators have put 37,000 police officers in place around the country.

Most of them worked for the ousted regime but were judged by the occupation officials after individual reviews to be competent, honest and reasonably independent from that government, Kerik said.

Each of the officers now working in Iraq has been given a mandatory American-devised training course, usually lasting a few weeks, in police tactics, democracy and human rights.

The Iraqi police force has been weakened by a lack of equipment, especially guns. 

In the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniya, for instance, only a fraction of the city's 2,500 police officers have guns. American marines overseeing the police have been forced to pair officers with guns with those who have none.

Kerik, acknowledging the shortage, said a shipment of 50,000 9-millimeter pistols would arrive shortly, and that 100,000 more would arrive next year.

The new training program outlined by Kerik reflects the growing sense of urgency among American officials, who are also grappling with growing attacks by Iraqi resistance fighters seeking an end to the occupation of the oil-rich country, it added.

"The streets of some Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, are still quite chaotic, with rampant robberies, kidnappings and shootings often going unpunished."

The collapse of public order that followed the end of the three-week invasion was made worse by the disintegration of the Iraqi army, which made guns and munitions easily available on the streets.

In Baghdad, for instance, American soldiers have set up checkpoints dedicated almost exclusively to stopping armed carjacking.

The chaotic security situation prevailing in some parts of the country could be more effectively dealt with by the Iraqis, who are seen as more credible peacekeepers than the American forces, said the Times.

Kerik admitted such a step would relieve American troops of the burden of doing the policing.

But it is unclear whether that would reduce the number of American troops needed in Iraq.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told NBC television on Sunday, August 24, that the U.S. forces in Iraq are stretched thin.

Myers insisted the 150,000 U.S. and British troops in Iraq were enough to do the job, and said reservists could be called if U.S. commanders in Iraq requested more forces.