By Waleed Ibrahim BAGHDAD, June 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. military will cautiously continue arming and training local Sunni Arab tribal police units to fight al Qaeda, its top generals say, even though a much-praised model in western Iraq is unravelling. Tribal sheikhs gathered in Anbar province, once the most dangerous area in Iraq, on Wednesday to discuss abandoning the Anbar Sahwa Council, held up by Americans as an example of how Sunni Arab Iraqis have united to combat Sunni Islamist al Qaeda. The strategy of working with local sheikhs to develop tribal police to secure their own neighbourhoods showed local Sunni Arabs had become tired of the indiscriminate killing of thousands of Iraqis by al Qaeda, U.S. generals say. That strategy is being expanded into insurgency hotbeds in western Baghdad and Diyala and Salahaddin provinces. But the Anbar example is fragmenting amid infighting between tribal leaders and dissatisfaction with the Sahwa Council's leader, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha.Opponents, who say they will set up a new council, accuse him of turning it into a political body. "We don't want to be politicians. Abu Risha is not the only one who fights al Qaeda. All the tribes in Anbar fight against al Qaeda," Hatem Ali al-Suleiman, head of Albu Assaf tribe, told Reuters by telephone from Anbar. He said he had the support of Anbar's 11 most important tribal leaders and that the new body would still work with U.S. forces. Others said there were two police forces in Anbar -- "one for Abu Risha and one for the rest of the province". Sheikh Hamid Farhan al-Haif, a supporter of Abu Risha and head of Albu Dhieb tribe, said there were about 20,500 people in the provisional police, all paid by Iraq's Interior Ministry. "What is the mistake that we committed? Is fighting al Qaeda a mistake?" Haif told Reuters. "ZILCH SECURITY" Major-General Rick Lynch, who commands an area across central Iraq from Baghdad's southern suburbs to the Euphrates River, said the strategy was necessary because there were some areas in his command which had "zero, zilch" security forces. "If you've got folks who say, 'hey this is my home town and I'm tired of the violence, and if you'll simply train me and equip me I'll protect my home town', we ought to jump on that like a duck on a June bug," Lynch told reporters this week. Other U.S. military chiefs in Iraq, including overall commander General David Petraeus, expressed support for arming and training Sunni tribal police but with some reservations. "The question is, post-al Qaeda, what is the role of these local provisional forces and we have some homework to do in that area," said Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, formerly in charge of restructuring Iraq's security forces. There is also a fear that, by arming tribal police, U.S. forces could be training and equipping future militias that will fight against Shi'ites and even Americans, and that weapons might simply disappear into the insurgency. Others are worried that the network of tribal police could include people who in the past fought against Iraqi and U.S. soldiers but have changed sides because they now see al Qaeda as the greater enemy in their neighbourhoods. "If I get indications that somebody's killing our soldiers, we ain't talking to them, we're killing or capturing them. We haven't crossed that line and we won't," Lynch said. (Additional reporting by Paul Tait)
