Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

AMMAN, 11 June 2004 — A group of 531 Iraqi police cadets graduated from an eight-week US-led training course in Jordan, bringing the number trained in the neighboring state to 3,390, a government source said.

Iraq’s consul to Jordan Abed Al-Khodr Maliki thanked the country for its “precious help in returning safety and stability to Iraq” at a brief gradution ceremony in Amman. This was the fifth group of Iraqi cadets to complete training in Jordan, which has agreed to help to train 32,000 policemen over the next two years and is also training Iraqi military personnel

Iraqi police have been seen as collaborators with the US-led coalition and hundreds have been killed since the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003. Washington has earmarked around one billion dollars this year to build from scratch an Iraqi police force of around 85,000 men.

To complement the police in Iraq’s 18 provinces, the coalition has also established a 15,000-strong paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

Jordan, one of Washington’s closest Arab allies, was opposed to the US-led war on Iraq last year, but has taken an active part in rebuilding Iraqi institutions.

The police-training course is given at the Jordan International Police Training Center on the windswept plains of Moaqar southeast of Amman and includes classes in international law, human rights, riot control and English.