The U.S. military can not get 3,000 more Iraqi troops it has long wanted for Baghdad campaign, because Iraqi soldiers are reluctant to leave their home areas, a U.S. general said Friday.

In a telephone conversation with U.S. media, Maj. Gen. James Thurman, the U.S. military commander in Baghdad, made the complaint.

He said he has been asking the Iraqi government for six more Iraqi battalions -- roughly 500 soldiers each -- to join counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad since June, but the plan can not materialize due to the reluctance of Iraqi soldiers.

Iraqi soldiers generally join battalions in their geographic regions and due to the distance, they are unwilling to travel to Baghdad.

But Thurman said Iraqi Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim is working on the issue and he is confident that he will finally get what he wanted.

The U.S. military recently said stopping sectarian violence in Baghdad has become the main target of its 3-1/2-year-old war In Iraq and it is finally up to the Iraqis to solve their own problem.

However, of the 147,000-strong U.S. force and the 302,000- strong Iraqi troops, only a small portion is deployed in Baghdad.

Thurman said there are 15,000 U.S. troops, 9,000 Iraqi army soldiers, 12,000 Iraqi national police and 22,000 local police operating in Baghdad.

He said although the Baghdad campaign needs more troops, but the U.S. military is not going to send more soldiers to the capital city.

Source: Xinhua