A DOUBLE suicide bombing outside a Baghdad police base killed 35 people yesterday as a Shia MP revealed that the Iraqi Government had started to put pressure on United States forces to leave the capital.

“The Government wants US troops to withdraw from Baghdad,” said Haidar al-Abadi, who is one of the Prime Minister’s inner circle.

Mr al-Abadi said that US officials had in preliminary discussions been reluctant to leave the city because they were concerned that it would open the way for Shia militants to attack the Baghdad Sunni minority.

Iraq has been embroiled in sectarian war since February, when Sunni extremists blew up a sacred Shia shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and Shia militias, many of them with links to the Government, decided to fight back.

Mr al-Abadi said that Iraq had proposed the creation of mixed Sunni-Shia battalions for Baghdad, but conceded that it would take time.

He gave warning that the security arrangements for Baghdad had to change: “The terrorists know the city is divided among the Iraqi Army, police and the US. We can’t carry on the way things are. Right now, Baghdad is like hell.”

Asked to confirm that negotiations over Baghdad were under way, Muwaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, said: “The Government . . . is engaged through a newly formed USIraqi security committee with the multinational forces in considering the transfer of security responsibilities.”

President Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, formed a joint group in late October to work toward transferring control of Iraq’s security from the US military to the Iraqi Government.

Speeding up America’s transfer of security responsibilities to Iraq will be enshrined in the country’s letter to the UN Security Council, which will request a one-year extension for US-led forces to stay in Iraq.

It lays out the goal of the multi-national forces to hand over security responsibility for more provinces to the Government in 2007, Hoshyar Zebari, Foreign Minister, told The Times.

Outside observers worry that the Shia-led Government’s drive to speed up the transfer of security responsibilities stems from its wish to consolidate its power over the Sunnis.

Two bombers blew themselves up yesterday beside a line of potential police recruits outside a police base in southern Baghdad, killing 35.

In other deaths, 50 bodies were found in Baqouba, north of Baghdad, and 25 more found scattered across the capital.

Meanwhile, Mr al-Maliki said he would carry out a longrumoured Cabinet reshuffle.

The Times is the only British newspaper to maintain a full-time Baghdad bureau

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