Hill: Iraqi elections will not affect U.S. troop withdrawal

From Mohammed Jamjoom
CNN
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) - Although the U.S. government would prefer that the Iraqi elections be held on time, a delay would not affect the schedule of troop withdrawal, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Friday.

"Would we like them (to) kind of get this over with early rather than late? We would, but sometimes in this country there's a tendency to do things at the last minute. So we'll see," U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill said Friday in a CNN interview.

The polls are scheduled for January 16, and Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission has said that the time schedule for planning the election is predicated on that date.

But both the United States and the United Nations have raised concerns that there is no election law three months before the scheduled polls.

If the new law isn't adopted the government may have to come up with a new election date or rely on an old election law used in the 2005 national elections, some officials say.

Delayed elections cause problems, Hill said, but he asserted it would not affect the schedule to withdraw troops.

"As for our schedule of troop withdrawal, we've been pretty clear about when the troops would be withdrawn," he said. "So our plan is to draw down the troops as we've said we're going do."

The United States plans to withdraw all of its combat troops by August, leaving 50,000 in advisory roles, and then withdraw those by the end of 2011.