Iraq security partners threaten to bolt

BAGHDAD — Members of a U.S.-funded volunteer security force in western Baghdad on Saturday threatened to abandon their partnership with the American military after an explosion killed four of their men, a blast they blamed on Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces, according to two volunteer leaders in the area.

The predominantly Sunni security volunteers were outraged that the bombing took place so close to an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Ghazaliyah area. After the attack, which also injured six people, a 325-member brigade of the Ghazaliyah Guardians was considering going after Shiite militias on their own terms, the two leaders said.

The security volunteers said they wanted the U.S. military to give them more authority to pursue and arrest people they deemed criminals in their neighborhoods. "Or else we will go back to military action to defend our families, and fight any military force that tries to enter Ghazaliyah," said Mazin al-Dulaimi, a member of the Guardians.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Stover, said American units in Ghazaliyah had received no reports of such a bombing in the neighborhood Saturday. The Associated Press reported a suicide car bomb in Ghazaliyah near an Iraqi army checkpoint, citing Iraqi police sources.

U.S. military commanders consider the more than 60,000 security volunteers across the country, most of whom are paid $300 a month under U.S. contracts, to be crucial in defusing the insurgency and decreasing violence.

But Iraq's Shiite-led government has grown more vocal in its concern about the groups, often referred to as Awakening Councils.

Iraqi officials worry they could undermine the work of the country's security forces.

Iraq's government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband the Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate force.

The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government's most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups.

The Interior Ministry has been slow to adopt the volunteers into the police force but says it has plans to include as many as 10,000 of them eventually and provide vocational training so that the rest can find jobs.

In a separate development, the U.S. military said one U.S. soldier was killed and 11 others were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded near their vehicles in the north Friday.

This month, the U.S. military has reported a 60 percent decline in violence since June. According to figures compiled by The Associated Press, fewer than 600 Iraqi civilians and security forces have been killed so far in December. The figure was 2,309 in December 2006.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.