Iraqi police: Najaf wasn't prepared for officers
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BAGHDAD (CNN) -- The Iraqi Interior Ministry rushed police reinforcements from Baghdad to Najaf last week with inadequate preparations, leading the Baghdad officers to return to the capital because of conditions they found unacceptable, an Iraqi police official said Tuesday.
About 150 new officers had been expected to begin joint patrols with U.S. troops in the Shiite holy city, which has been besieged by fighting between coalition forces and a militia aligned with maverick cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
An American adviser to the police on Monday blamed the U.S. Army for failing to provide the Iraqi police with proper accommodations, equipment and food -- but the Iraqi police official in Baghdad said it was the Interior Ministry's lack of preparation.
Maj. Bassem al-Ani said Najaf's police chief requested backup, and within seven hours, the 150 officers were ordered to Najaf. But, al-Ani said, there was no discussion of sleeping or meal arrangements for the officers, who came back to Baghdad when they learned the city was not ready for their arrival.
Al-Ani said Interior and police officials have since gone to Najaf and made arrangements for additional officers, who will be sent when the police chief there notifies them he is ready.
The U.S. adviser to the police told CNN that the officers who went to Najaf felt they had received "second class" treatment after being given no personal gear or changes of clothes and military food rations that contained pork.
"They didn't even have a mattress to sleep on," the adviser said. "The U.S. Army really dropped the ball here."
Coalition military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the problems would be straightened out quickly.
"There are some logistics problems that hadn't been worked out by the time they got there," he said. "We expect that over the next day or two, after those arrangements are made, they'll be down there."
Coalition officials hope to eventually turn over the security situation in Najaf to Iraqi police, a measure called for by an agreement reached between al-Sadr and other Shiite leaders.
That agreement called for U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Mehdi army to withdraw from the area -- a provision the coalition military rejected because, they said, it would create a "security vacuum."
Instead, they halted offensive operations in the region and made plans to bring in the Iraqi police, training with them extensively last week in Baghdad.
