SO SAYS THE IRAQI INTERIOR MINISTER

The rest of Wolfowitz's day was taken up with meetings that had been arranged earlier to underscore his strategy of seeking to improve stability by giving Iraqis greater responsibility for security.

He met in the morning with newly retrained Iraqi police in the New Baghdad neighborhood, where his host was Iraq's deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, a career police officer who was imprisoned under Hussein.

"We are sure we can control Baghdad and all Iraq," Ibrahim said. But he said the country would need to expand its police force from 40,000 to 70,000, and that the process would take two years.

But Mr. Ibrahim...the French wanted you to do it in six months...