CNN REPORTS: PETRAEUS TELLS CONGRESS GOAL IS TO RETRN TO 'PRE-SURGE' LEVELS, THEN WAIT

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. military commander in Iraq testified Tuesday that troop levels there should return to "pre-surge" levels this summer, but the military should gauge conditions before making further decisions.

There has been "significant but uneven progress," Petraeus said, but recent violence shows the progress is "fragile and reversible." "The situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/08/iraq.hearing/index.html


After the 20,000 troops sent during last year's surge are withdrawn, by July, the military should wait 45 days before deciding on more reductions, Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable," he said. "However, it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still fragile security gains our troopers have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve."

Petraeus said the surge of U.S. troops last year and the incorporation of Iraqi citizens' security groups have yielded results. Both efforts have helped reduce "the areas where al Qaeda enjoys support."

"Iraq has also conducted a surge, adding well over 100,000 additional soldiers and police to the ranks of its security forces in 2007 and slowly increasing its capability to deploy and employ these forces," Petraeus said.

Recent military operations in the southern city of Basra demonstrate that Iraqi forces can do things today that would have been impossible a year ago, the general said. Watch as Petraeus describes innumerable challenges »

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who testified alongside Petraeus, said Iraqis have shown progress on the political front as well, with parliament -- previously paralyzed by infighting -- passing legislation that advances "reconciliation and nation building."

Both men warned that with al Qaeda in Iraq retreating -- though not yet defeated -- Iran is the most likely force to derail the country's tenuous stability. See military charts showing violence levels »

The flow of insurgents through Syria -- while reduced to a degree -- also exacerbates problems in Iraq, as do "insufficient Iraqi governmental capacity, lingering sectarian mistrust and corruption," Petraeus said.

The Islamic republic is "funding, training, arming and directing the so-called special groups," which left unchecked, "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq," he said. See the charts the general used to make his case -- PDF