CAMP RAMADI, Iraq – The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday that an American role over the next 21/2 years is crucial to ensuring legitimate national elections and helping Iraq become a long-term U.S. partner in the Middle East.

Gen. Ray Odierno disputed a colonel’s call for the military to declare victory and leave ahead of schedule, telling The Associated Press that the American presence is needed even though security is better than expected a month after Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for protecting cities.

“Our goal here given us by the president is a secure, stable sovereign self-reliant Iraq. We’re not there yet,” he said in a wide-ranging interview after meeting with Iraqi officials at a U.S. base outside the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi.

Odierno argued that U.S. troops should stay mainly to train and advise Iraqis to avoid a resurgence of major violence that would squander more than six years of enormous U.S. sacrifices. He cautioned that many obstacles remain, particularly Kurdish-Arab tensions that could stoke violence in northern Iraq.

His remarks came five days after the circulation of a controversial memo prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, a U.S. Army adviser to the Iraqi military in Baghdad. Reese argued that the American effort to train, equip and advise Iraqi security forces has reached a point of rapidly diminishing returns and the U.S. should go home next summer, 16 months ahead of schedule.

The memo was intended for limited distribution among U.S. officers in Baghdad but ended up being circulated on the Internet last Thursday. It reflected the frustration of many American soldiers who feel they have done as much as they can after more than six years of warfare that has left at least 4,331 service members dead.

Iraq has seen relatively little violence since the June 30 deadline for Americans to pull back from urban areas to rural bases.

BAGHDAD – The deputy commander of a radical Sunni Islamic group linked to al-Qaida has been arrested in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

The group, Ansar al-Islam, is believed by the military to be behind attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops in Mosul, considered the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq, and elsewhere in the country.

Fakri Hadi Gari, also known as Abu Abbas and Mullah Halgurd, and nine other suspected members were arrested July 24 during a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation, the U.S. military said.

The Associated Press