A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Falluja earlier this week to support US Marines fighting for control of the city, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The paper quoted US Army Major General Paul Eaton as saying the Iraqi soldiers had told the American military they had not signed up to fight fellow Iraqis.
"(Eaton) declined to characterise the incident as a mutiny, but rather called it 'a command failure'," the Post said.
It quoted Eaton, who is overseeing the development of the post-Saddam Iraqi security forces, as saying the 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Armed Forces refused to fight last Monday after members of the unit were shot at in a Shia neighbourhood in Baghdad while on their way to Falluja.
The Post said it was the first time US commanders had tried to involve the new Iraqi army in major combat and the battalion's refusal to fight "is casting new doubt on US plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces".
"The lines are blurring for a lot of Iraqis right now and we're having problems with a lot of security functions right now," it quoted Eaton as saying.
The 2nd Battalion is one of four in the new Iraqi army. It graduated from training camp on January 6.
Eaton told the Post that the battalion's mission in Falluja would have been to help with secondary military tasks like manning roadblocks and securing the perimeter.
He said one problem was that the Iraqis were not told they would have a relatively benign role. "The battalion thought it was going to be thrown into a firestorm in Falluja," he said.
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