In Diyala Province, where the Americans closed 11 of 18 bases or outposts before Tuesday’s deadline, the transfers did not go entirely smoothly. An official in Mr. Maliki’s office showed up early at a camp near Baquba and complained that the Americans had not left behind generators and air-conditioners for the Iraqis — something the American commander in the region said had never been part of the agreement. The dispute on Sunday delayed the formal transfer.
“You can’t treat your partners that way,” the commander, Col. Burt K. Thompson of the First Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, said in Baquba.
In Diyala Province, where the Americans closed 11 of 18 bases or outposts before Tuesday’s deadline, the transfers did not go entirely smoothly. An official in Mr. Maliki’s office showed up early at a camp near Baquba and complained that the Americans had not left behind generators and air-conditioners for the Iraqis — something the American commander in the region said had never been part of the agreement. The dispute on Sunday delayed the formal transfer.
“You can’t treat your partners that way,” the commander, Col. Burt K. Thompson of the First Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, said in Baquba.
