The Iraqi national police force is riddled with militia and corruption and should be disbanded, a panel of retired US military officers has told Congress.

The 20-member panel also said today that the Iraqi Army was incapable of acting independently from US forces for at least another 18 months, and “cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven”.

However, General James Jones, the recently retired head of the US Marine Corps, who led the commission, also told the Senate Armed Services committee that the US should lighten its military “footprint” in Iraq to combat its image of an occupying force.

He recommended giving the Iraqi Army — which is showing signs of real progress despite its “limited operational effectiveness” — a greater profile in security patrols, but with US troops still playing a substantial support role.

The 152-page report was demanded by Congress as an independent assessment of the situation in Iraq before next week’s pivotal testimony by General David Petraeus, the US ground commander, and Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador in Baghdad.

General Jones’s report appeared to turn President Bush’s Iraq strategy on its head. Mr Bush has said repeatedly that the purpose of the “surge” was to provide a security “breathing space” to aid political reconciliation. But the commission said that genuine security advances were impossible without political progress first. “All progress seems to flow from this most pressing requirement,” the report states.

Supporters of Mr Bush’s war strategy pointed to the slow progress of the Iraqi Army, cited in the report as another reason against a rapid withdrawal of US troops. Democrats will use it as evidence that the US should shift from a combat role and pour resources into training the Iraqi military — a central recommendation of last year’s Iraq Study Group report.

The commission members, who spent three weeks in Iraq this summer and conducted 150 interviews, were most damning about the Iraqi national police. They said that its parent body, the Interior Ministry, was a ministry “in name only” and rife with sectarianism and corruption. The entire 26,000-member police force should be scrapped and rebuilt anew, they said.

General Jones told the Senate that he did not support setting a deadline for troop withdrawals. Democrats on Capitol Hill also appear to be edging away from such a demand because they lack the votes to pass legislation demanding a withdrawal date.

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