New York Daily News

WASHINGTON – As President Bush starts a two-day summit on Iraq Monday, a top Iraqi security official is predicting that many American troops will be headed home by the end of the year and nearly gone by 2008.

Mowafak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, suggested Sunday that conditions were ripe for a U.S. withdrawal, saying that “by the end of the year … I believe that the number of the multinational forces will be probably less than 100,000.”

“And by the end of next year, most of the multinational forces will have gone home,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

“The overwhelming majority of the multinational forces will leave probably before … the middle of 2008.”

White House and military officials have maintained that the decision on removing the roughly 133,000 American forces – and the 16,000 from other nations – would be “conditions-based.”

Bush on Monday begins the Camp David powwow on “how to best deploy America’s resources” in Iraq. He announced the summit last week after the killing of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the filling out of the remaining key posts in Iraq’s government.

Al-Qaida in Iraq on Sunday vowed to end the positive news, threatening on an Islamic Web site to launch “major attacks that will shake the enemy like an earthquake.”

The statement could not be verified, but officials reacted as if it were genuine.

“I expect them to say what they said,” Gen. George Casey said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I expect them to try to do what they said.”

Casey also echoed, with less certainty, al-Rubaie’s prediction of a drawdown of U.S troops.

“I think we’re going to be able to see continued gradual reductions of coalition forces over the coming months and into next year,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” explaining that it depends on Iraqi forces continuing to expand their abilities.

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