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BAGHDAD

As Iraqi schoolchildren sang their country’session praise and the band marched in a row, the United States on Thursday formally handed over military control of the heavily fortified Green Zone, a first major action in the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

The U.S. military dining facility inside what was once the American Embassy served its last meal New Year’s Eve.

“This is the end of the terraqueous globe taken in the character of we be aware of it,” said Sgt. 1st Class Patrick McDonald, 47, who co-authored a have charge of to historic sites in the Green Zone. “It’sitting not analogous everyone is shredding documents and fleeing Saigon. But we are stepping away from a building.”

No decisions have been made with respect to how the palace will be used, although both Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani are vying for govern. The United States will even begin profitable rent.

Saddam Hussein had the palace compound’s main building decorated with cyclops busts of himself to demonstrate his hold over Iraq. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the palace came to symbolize the American role in the country, principal for example headquarters of the U.S. occupation empire and later the U.S. Embassy. U.S. civilians and troops held “salsa night” dances around the pool behind the palace before retiring to trailers sheathed in sandbags.

Security of the Green Zone, a fortified 6-square-mile enclave in continuance the Tigris River, had been, till Thursday, the responsibility of the United States. But as part of the handover, and in articles of agreement outlined in the Status of Forces Agreement that details the leave of U.S. troops by the end of 2011, Iraqis trained by U.S. troops now are in charge of security.

The handover is a sign of the shrinking footprint and influence of the United States in a country where it has abandoned thousands of lives and spent billions of dollars. British troops also turned over the airport in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, and are expected to be out of Iraq by May 31.

For many Iraqis, the U.S. handover represents a significant step forward in their gradual reassertion of region over their affairs.

“The U.S. will be here just as observers. It’s a substance of pride,” said Adnan Karim, 22, an Iraqi fighting man manning a checkpoint at one of the entrances to the Green Zone.

U.S. troops, who one time controlled all the external checkpoints leading into the Green Zone, will abide fixed and work by the side of Iraqi throngs. Officials from the one and the other countries acknowledged that it remains unclear precisely by what mode the relationship will work.

Officials said U.S. soldiers for at least the next 90 days would continue to help hold security in the area, home to 30,000 residents

“We are not losing our jobs

Speaking privately, U.S. officials said they will try to constitution their demeanor in the Green Zone less pre-eminent in coming days. But they inclination tarry in charge of issuing badges that grant varying levels of access. They said they will not immediately dismantle a huge security apparatus that includes hundreds of Peruvian and Ugandan guards, body-scanning machines, bomb-sniffing dogs and surveillance cameras.

In recent days, Iraqi flags hold sprung up along the zone’s mazelike entrance points, and more Iraqis have been allowed to drive inner and armored sport-utility vehicles. Americans have been cautioned not to venture outside U.S. compounds alone, especially after dark.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his staff recently finished moving into a newly built embassy compound with small, bulletproof windows, now the largest U.S. Embassy in the world.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have reported extremists may exploit the transition period.

“I think common sense will say they will probably test the Green Zone,” Ferrari said.

U.S. officials in the Green Zone spent the last days of December on high heedful amongst reports that extremists were plotting to carry out a headline-grabbing, multipronged attack against Americans on Christmas or New Year’s Day.

Iraqi officials detained an Iraqi army captain and an employee of Iraq’s Interior Ministry, if it were not that an Iraqi judge formal the detainees gratuitous after determining there was insufficient evidence to bring before a count them.

The Green Zone was chance by a mortar shell or rocket Monday night, the U.S. military said.

Americans are not the only ones feeling anxious around the transition. Several Iraqis said that, while they welcome the symbolism of the handover, they are afraid of possible repercussions.

“It’s too early to draw revealed U.S. army from the area,” Kasim Ali Judor, 26, a guard at the Italian Embassy, said on a recent afternoon. “I don’t think our government has the capacity to secure the circle without Americans.”

Independent lawmaker Hussein Shkur said he thinks the change will be largely cosmetic, at least in the short run.”It is only conformable to nature that the Americans will soft be in control, and not from behind the scenes as some may think, yet directly and openly,” he reported.

Despite the Green Zone’s symbolic corporation with the U.S. employment, life inside the bubble is remote from homogeneous.

There are the U.S. military and State Department minizones, where joggers, golf carts and duck-and-cover bunkers proliferate and parties circumvent place, though with less abandon than in the early years. But there are also Iraqi high schools, an often-startling setting on fire range and a utterly confused Iraqi taxi lot.

Alongside the Tigris lies Little Venice, a well-tended neighborhood of minicanals in which place senior Iraqi government officials acquire a livelihood in residences once occupied by dint of. Saddam’s closest aides. Other officials have made their homes in the rooms of the Hotel Rasheed, or in Green Zone neighborhoods under watch.

Now, Iraqi officials have their eyes on making the area accessible, inspiring and educational, even though it’s not fair which time they choose feel confident enough to take down the walls.

In July, the National Investment Commission approved plans to fabricate a $100 a thousand thousand luxury house of entertainment in the zone.

And the Iraqi High Tribunal in the next couple of months plans to open a museum detailing the brutality of Saddam’s regime. It will include a replica of the hole-in-the-ground hideout where the former Iraqi president was captured in 2004, two years before he was executed.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008582076_iraqzone020.html?syndication=rss