BAGHDAD (AP) – In a move that could portend a strategy change, the commander of American forces in northern Iraq said Sunday he has proposed reducing his troop levels and shifting next year to missions focused less on direct combat.

Army Major General Benjamin Mixon told The Associated Press that if current trends hold, he would like to begin this troop reduction and change in mission in Ninevah province, where he said Iraqi army forces already are operating nearly independently. He has proposed shifting the province to Iraqi government control as early as August.

Ninevah’s capital is Mosul, the country’s third largest city.

If put in place, General Mixon’s approach would not necessarily mean an overall reduction in American troops early next year. It could mean shifting several thousand troops from General Mixon’s area to other parts of Iraq for some months.

That, however, could mark the beginning of a phased move away from the heavy combat role that American troops have played, at a cost of more than 3,600 American deaths, for more than four years. That, in turn, could lead to the first substantial American troop reductions beginning in the spring or summer – a far slower timetable than many in Congress are demanding.

General Mixon is not the only American commander contemplating a repositioning or reduction of American troops in the months ahead.

Colonel John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, who leads a task force of 6,000 American soldiers in a section of Anbar province that includes Ramadi, said in an interview Friday that by January he might be ready to take a 25 percent troop cut if the Iraqi police, numbering about 6,000 now, are made stronger by then.

“The police are the keys to maintaining security from Ak Qaeda,” Colonel Charlton said.

General Mixon acknowledged that an American shift in northern Iraq meant risking gains made over recent years. But he said it would have important political benefits in Baghdad.

“To be perfectly frank with you, it puts the Iraqi central government in a position of having to assume responsibility for the security situation,” General Mixon said in a telephone interview from his headquarters at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit.

It is not clear whether the government will be capable of fulfilling that responsibility as early as next year.

General Mixon also has proposed allowing Ninevah province to hold elections either late this year or early in 2008. This would ease the transition from American control, he said.

“It certainly would make sense to tie the two fairly closely together,” General Mixon said, because it would provide political reinforcement for an important shift in security responsibility.

The government in Baghdad has failed thus far to pass legislation enabling provincial elections nationwide. That is one of the benchmarks the government set for itself this year and one that Congress wants to see accomplished by September.

General Mixon said he thinks individual provinces should hold elections when they are ready, rather than wait for all 18 provinces to do so at once.
General Mixon said Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the top day-to-day American commander in Iraq, has agreed with his proposal, which he called a contingency plan subject to further approval.

There are nearly 24,000 American troops in General Mixon’s area of responsibility. It stretches north from Baghdad to the Turkish border, including the semiautonomous Kurdish region where three provinces – Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah – already have returned to Iraqi government control.

General Mixon said he might be able to reduce that total by one-half in the 12 months to 18 months after beginning a transition in January.

American commanders in Baghdad and areas south of the capital have said in recent days that it is too early to say how long the current U.S. troop buildup should be maintained. Yet many lawmakers in Washington are pressing for a change in direction as early as September. That is the month when General David Petraeus, the top American general in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to report to President Bush and Congress on how the troop buildup is working.

General Mixon’s plan suggests the possibility of a new direction for American strategy. But it is not the first time that senior American commanders have proposed troop reductions and shifts in mission, only to be stopped by an unforeseen surge in insurgent violence.

Last year, for example, the American military was planning to reduce its forces from 15 brigades to 10 or 12 brigades. The idea was scrapped last summer. In January, Mr. Bush ordered a boost from 15 brigades to 20.

In the interview, General Mixon said he is troubled by a political debate in Washington that appears to him to oversimplify the Iraq problem. He said America needs a strategy for protecting the gains it has made in Iraq, even as it transitions control to the Iraqi government.

“I don’t want to stay here any longer than we absolutely have to,” he said. “Neither does anybody else. But we understand the investment we’ve made in this place and how important it would be to have at least some type of stability in Iraq prior to us leaving in large numbers.”

Northern Iraq is a diverse area with problems not felt elsewhere in the country. That includes the threat of a large-scale incursion by the Turkish military to drive out Kurdish separatists whom Turkey’s government considers terrorists. General Mixon said he does not foresee such a crisis.

“I’m not alarmed about it at all,” he said. “I think that will be worked out in the long run.”

The Kurdish rebel commander, in an AP interview Friday, said he believed the Turkish military will launch a long-anticipated offensive against separatist bases in northern Iraq shortly after Sunday’s general elections in Turkey.

But Murat Karayilan, the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, denied charges by Turkey’s government that his group was using its bases in Iraq to launch attacks against Turkish forces.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened to go into northern Iraq if talks with Iraq and the U.S. after the elections fail to produce effective measures against Kurdish guerrillas.

Erdogan’s ruling party is likely to win a majority of seats in the parliamentary vote.

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Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Lewzhe, Iraq, contributed to this report.