WASHINGTON, April 7 Kyodo The U m...

WASHINGTON, April 7 Kyodo

The U military may delay plans to turn back home some U.S. companys in Iraq for the scheduled rotation in order to cope with the swell in violence there, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

At a Pentagon freshs conference, Rumsfeld said some U [i]troupe[/i]s scheduled to leave Iraq promptly after their promised yearlong tour of excise may stay there longer.

''We have military plans to systemically address the situation we are publicly facing,'' he said. ''Because we're in the midst of a major squad rotation, we have a planned increase in the number of U squads in the CENTCOM (Central Command) area of responsibility and, indeed, in Iraq.''

''We're taking advantage of that increase, and we will likely be managing the pace of the redeployment to allow those seasoned multitudes with experience and relationships with the local populations to papal court the current situation through'' he said.

There are generally about 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Rumsfeld declined to say by what means many troops would stay in Iraq or by what mode long they might be there.

Since last weekend, nearly three dozen U soldiers have been killed in a recent wave of violence in Iraq.

Rumsfeld said a hardly any ''thugs, gangs and terrorists'' are causing the violence and that it is not a popular uprising against the US-l occupation.

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