<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061130/wl_mideast_afp/iraqpoliticssadr_061130124210> Sadr seeks anti-US bloc in Iraqi parliament
by Sabah Jerges1 hour, 55 minutes ago
Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is building an anti-US parliamentary alliance to demand the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, some of his party's lawmakers have told AFP.
The 30-strong Sadrist bloc has suspended its support of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition and withdrawn six ministers from cabinet in protest at the premier's meeting with US President George W. Bush.
Salih al-Agaili, a member of Sadr's parliamentary group, said Thursday the bloc now hoped to persuade more lawmakers to follow suit, adding that some have "started contacting us to take a similar position. We are holding talks with them."
He did not name the groups but said they would soon declare their intentions. "We are endeavouring to form a national front inside parliament to oppose the occupation," Agaili said.
He stressed that the minimum condition for Sadrist deputies to rejoin the government would be "a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces."
US forces are deployed in Iraq at the invitation of the national government and any parliamentary decision to expel them could trigger a political crisis. It is not clear, however, whether Sadr has the numbers to win such a vote.
Earlier this year, Sadr supporters claimed they had recruited 100 members of the 275-member parliament who wanted to send home the 150,000-strong US force backing Maliki, but this was never put to the test in the chamber.
Bush said on Thursday after holding talks with the Iraqi leader in Jordan that troops would remain in Iraq "until the job is complete".
The UN Security Council had earlier renewed the US-led coalition's mandate until the end of 2007 at the request of Maliki's government.
Agaili said Wednesday's decision to suspend the role of pro-Sadr deputies in the government was a result of both this UN vote and Maliki's decision to "meet the criminal George Bush in Amman".
After his talks with Bush, Maliki received the US leader's endorsement to continue his struggle to put down an insurgency, quell sectarian fighting and build a stable Iraq.
Maliki also won an agreement that he can take control of Iraqi forces from US-led coalition commanders more quickly, but Bush explicitly refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of the US combat force.
"We will submit a host of demands to the prime minister when he comes back from Jordan," declared Baha al-A'raji, a Shiite cleric and a spokesman for Sadr's movement.
"At the forefront of these demands are the setting of a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupier, the handover of security tasks to Iraqis and the improvement of public services in secure cities," he told AFP.
Sadr's group also controls the Mahdi Army, the largest of Iraq's unofficial militias, and the boycott has increased concerns that Iraq's brutal sectarian war may push the country into further chaos.
Since February when Sunni extremists blew up a renowned Shiite mosque and triggered a wave of sectarian violence, many Iraqis have turned for protection to illegal armed groups like the Shiite Mahdi Army or Sunni Al-Qaeda.
The government and US commanders hope that better-trained Iraqi state forces will one day be able to win the trust of the population, but observers fear that a too rapid US withdrawal could see the country tumble into civil war.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/30/AR2006113000067.html> Bush: Calls for Troop Drawdowns Unrealistic At Summit, President Stands by Iraqi Prime Minister, Discusses Speeding Up Security Handover
By Michael Abramowitz and Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, November 30, 2006; 8:42 AM
AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 -- President Bush delivered a staunch endorsement of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday morning and dismissed calls for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq as unrealistic, following a summit meeting in which the two leaders discussed speeding up the turnover of security responsibilities.
"He's the right guy for Iraq," Bush said an a news conference in the Jordanian capital, as he stood next to a somewhat stiff and unsmiling Iraqi premier.
Bush sought to pre-empt the growing clamor to withdraw the more than 140,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, which has been fueled by the November Congressional elections and the expected conclusions of a high-level commission headed by former Secretary of State James C. Baker III and former Indiana Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. Although the president was not asked directly about the panel's recommendations, which will be made next week but were partially leaked to news reporters late Wednesday, he seemed to have the group in mind when he said: "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff announced the shift of some U.S. troops to Baghdad from elsewhere in the country in an effort to quell raging sectarian violence. One Pentagon official said the Joint Chiefs are considering mobilizing additional reserve troops as well.
Bush is known for not telegraphing major policy changes in advance-- he ousted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example, only days after saying Rumsfeld would stay until the end of his term.
But the president's comments in Amman, coupled with other statements in the past few days, seemed to set firm lines on Iraq policy beyond which he would not be pushed.
These include no major troop withdrawals, no partition of the country and no direct talks with Iran and Syria as part of a broader diplomatic effort in the region. Bush pointedly dismissed the idea of splitting Iraq into parts according to ethnicity, saying it would only lead to more sectarian violence.
Bush's strong support for Maliki came despite a leaked memo from National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley questioning whether the current government has the capacity and will to crack down on private militias responsible for much of the violence gripping Baghdad and beyond.
The president said he and Maliki used roughly two hours of meetings Thursday morning -- both alone and with aides present -- to explore changes in policies that could strengthen the ability of the Iraqi government to rein in the militias.
The discussions went well, by the account of White House aides, despite a last-minute cancellation of an initial meeting Wednesday night between Bush, Maliki and King Abdullah of Jordan. Maliki said there was "no problem" that caused the cancellation--just a decision that there was no need to have a trilateral meeting.
Bush and his aides said a major focus of Thursday's meeting with Maliki was accelerating the training of Iraqi security forces and turning over to Maliki full responsibility for Iraq's new army -- which some in the U.S. military worry could be used as a sectarian militia unless American oversight continues.
"One of his frustrations with me is that he believes we've been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people," Bush said before boarding Air Force One for the flight home. "And today we had a meeting that will accelerate the capacity for the Prime Minister to do the hard work necessary to help stop this violence.
"Our goal is to ensure that the Prime Minister has more capable forces under his control so his government can fight the terrorists and the death squads, and provide security and stability in his country," Bush said.
Bush declined to answer a question about whether he urged Maliki to distance himself from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as Hadley suggested in his memo. Al-Sadr is seen as perhaps the most perhaps Iraq's single most powerful politician. He controls the largest and most violent private Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army; his supporters in Parliament and the Iraqi cabinet walked out on Wednesday in protest of Maliki's meeting with Bush.
Many U.S. officials and experts believe confronting the Mahdi Army is essential to curbing the violence in Iraq.
Asked whether he would break with al-Sadr, Maliki did not answer directly, noting that al-Sadr's faction is only one part of his ruling coalition and that all those participating in the government bear responsibilities.
"I do not talk about one side or the other," he said. "I'm talking about a state; I'm talking about law; I'm talking about commitments. And this should apply to all the partners who have chosen to participate in the political process."
Later Thursday, he called for the Sadr bloc to end their boycott and return to government, the Associated Press reported.
While Bush continues to oppose direct talks with Iran about Iraq's future, Maliki said he remained open to such discussions. "We are ready to cooperate with everybody . . . especially our neighbors," he said.
In an unusual open letter to the American people, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday excoriated U.S. policy in Iraq and called for the pullout of U.S. troops.The summit unfolded amid political turmoil in Baghdad and fast-moving policy developments in the United States: the protest by the Sadr bloc in Baghdad, disclosure of U.S. doubts about Maliki's capabilities in the Hadley memo, reports of a consensus reached by the Iraq Study Group and the announcement by the U.S. military that more troops would be sent to the Iraqi capital from elsewhere in the country. At the Pentagon, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that the U.S. military is bolstering its forces in Baghdad to deal with "unacceptable" levels of violence in Iraq.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace said that the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., is moving "a couple of battalions" to Baghdad and is determining how many troops he can move to the capital without creating gaps in other parts of Iraq.
A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the battalions would replace units being rotated out of the country. They would include about 1,600 soldiers from an Army brigade equipped with advanced Stryker armored vehicles, the officials said. The unit, now in the northern city of Mosul, would replace departing troops from the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade.
In addition, the official said, the Joint Chiefs are considering calling up 2,800 troops from four Army Reserve combat engineer battalions and sending them to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in early January. Such a call-up could be politically sensitive, because three of the reserve battalions have already deployed, meaning some soldiers in the units could be involuntarily mobilized for a second time. Under Pentagon policy, that would require the approval of the defense secretary.
Pace, the Joint Chiefs chairman, acknowledged that the U.S. military fell short last summer when it attempted to quell spiraling sectarian fighting in Baghdad with a significant increase in U.S. and Iraqi forces. Instead, fighting in the capital between Shiite and Sunni Muslims has soared to new extremes.
"The amount of violence in Baghdad . . . right now is not where we want to be," Pace said. "The impact of those increases has not been what we wanted it to be." Pace, however, said Iraq is not in a state of civil war because its government and security forces are "functioning."
He emphasized that Casey and Iraqi leaders have identified more Iraqi units to move to Baghdad from elsewhere in the country. But he acknowledged that this process is hampered by the sectarian and parochial nature of many military units.
"There are some units around Iraq that, if moved to Baghdad, would not be helpful," Pace said. "If a Sunni unit somewhere else in Iraq moved into a Shia neighborhood, or a Shia unit . . . moved into a Sunni neighborhood," he said, that "is not going to help the problem." Moreover, commanders want to avoid creating a regional security vacuum by moving Iraqi troops to Baghdad, he said.
Pace denied that there are any immediate plans to pull U.S. troops wholesale out of the volatile western province of Anbar and send them to Baghdad, leaving the province -- U.S. commanders call it a Sunni insurgent stronghold -- in the hands of Iraqi forces. "Why would we want to forfeit any part of Iraq to the enemy? We don't," he said. But he said the goal "eventually" was to transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces.
Pace said he is considering further U.S. troop increases in Iraq among a range of options as he reviews military strategy there, but he acknowledged the stress that would inflict on American ground forces. "If you determine to surge more today, you are taking it out of your rotation base and, therefore, using it today and not having it available for tomorrow," he said. "It's pure math."
The abrupt cancellation of the opening session of the Amman summit Wednesday night drew sharp questions from reporters, who were informed of the change only after arriving at the palace where the meeting was to have taken place.
White House officials said the decision had nothing to do with political tensions in Baghdad or developments in Washington. Instead, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said that Maliki had had a productive meeting with Abdullah on Wednesday before Bush arrived, and that Bush and Maliki felt "there was not an agenda for the three for a trilateral that they felt was necessary."
"No one should read too much into this," Bartlett said.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said that "there's no snub" by Maliki.
Two senior administration officials, at a contentious background briefing with White House reporters who repeatedly challenged their explanation, said all the parties involved believed it would be more productive to have two separate meetings-- Wednesday evening between Bush and Abdullah and Thursday morning between Bush and Maliki. They noted that Bush and the king had a variety of issues to discuss, including broader Middle East peace initiatives and the situation in Lebanon.
"You have one shot at dealing with the king," one senior official said.
Abdullah had made clear that he planned to use his own meeting with Bush to push for a renewed U.S. drive to address the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which the king has described as the "core" issue in the region. White House aides said the king pressed Bush during a dinner meeting Wednesday to move faster to resolve the so-far intractable problem.
One senior administration official said the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, received word Wednesday afternoon from the Jordanians and the Iraqis that there was no need for a three-way meeting that night. Khalilzad called Air Force One, on its way to Amman from Latvia, with the news. This official said Bush concurred.
Administration officials insisted Wednesday that the president maintains full confidence in Maliki, despite the bluntly worded Nov. 8 memo by Hadley raising pointed doubts about the prime minister's ability to curb sectarian violence.
"His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change," Hadley wrote. "But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."
Administration officials would not discuss the memo on the record, saying it remains classified despite its publication. One senior official said that it was appropriate for Hadley, who visited Baghdad and met with Maliki several weeks ago, to raise "probing questions" about the government but that the memo did not constitute a "summary judgment" about the current Iraqi government.
Although the memo suggests several alternatives for the lack of progress by Maliki, the official said the White House has concluded that the main problem with Maliki is a "capability" issue. He said a focus of the Bush-Maliki sessions would be: "How do we increase his capability to turn his good intentions, as described in this memo, into concrete action?"
Tyson reported from Washington. Staff writers Robin Wright, Thomas E. Ricks and Debbi Wilgoren in Washington and correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Baghdad contributed to this report. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>