Beating insurgents may take over a decade - Rumsfeld

27/06/2005 - 08:16:24
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, said it may take as long as 12 years to defeat insurgents in Iraq.

He said Iraq’s security forces will have to finish the job because US and foreign troops will have left the country by then.

Mr Rumsfeld was speaking as suicide bombers struck a police headquarters, an army base and a hospital around Mosul, killing 33 people in a setback to efforts to rebuild the north-western city’s police force that was driven by intimidation from insurgents seven months ago.