Talabani blasts US report on Iraq

Outgoing Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld visits troops assigned to Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq's restive Al-Anbar province during a surprise trip to Iraq yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

The report's recommendations were also implicitly criticised by outgoing defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who paid a defiant farewell visit to US troops and urged them to stay the course, the Pentagon reported Sunday.

Four days after the release of the report, which was hailed by many US lawmakers and commentators as pointing to a way out of the Iraq crisis, Talabani invited journalists to his Baghdad villa to denounce it.

"If you read this report one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing conditions on, neglecting the fact that we are a sovereign country, and respected," he said.

Meanwhile, at least 26 people were killed on Sunday in Iraq, including nine Shias in sectarian attacks on two Baghdad families, a security official said.

Another 17 corpses, three of them headless, were recovered by police in northern Baghdad's Al-Hurriyah neighborhood, the official added.

In the attack on the families, gunmen broke into a home in the southwestern Jihad neighborhood and killed five Shia brothers, one of them a policeman, after separating them from their sisters, the official said.

The women were unharmed.

In another similar attack, gunmen entered a house of another Shia family in the same area and killed a man and his three sons.