WASHINGTON: They are unlikely allies — an athletic, down-home Texan who once owned a baseball team and a soft-spoken Iraqi family doctor who spent almost a decade of exile in Iran. George Bush, a born-again Christian, envisioned a secular new Iraq. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a devout Shia, wants Islam enshrined in his nation’s constitution.

But the legacies of the US and Iraqi leaders may now depend on how much they can achieve together over the next six months. And for all their differences, they sound increasingly alike, from charting the political future in a new constitution to silencing a resistance. The first step in their effort is to beat back dire predictions and calls for an early US withdrawal.

In an interview, al-Jaafari insisted that recent US-Iraq offensives have improved security ‘dramatically’, echoing the administration’s prediction that resistance is in its death throes. He also said it would be a serious mistake to designate a specific date for the withdrawal of US troops.

“We would like to see the withdrawal of American forces as quickly as possible because the presence of any foreign troops on our land means there is a weakness that we cannot by ourselves control the security situation,” al-Jaafari told Washington Post editors and reporters. But a deadline would ‘play into the hands of the terrorists’.

He instead called for accelerating the training of Iraqi troops, including a role for nations not part of the US-led military coalition.

“We strongly prefer an increase in quality of Iraqi forces, increase in number, increase in efficiency, increase in the effectiveness of tactics they use, as well as increase in equipment ... anything that will raise efficiency of Iraqi forces is something that will be very welcomed because it will allow other forces, especially American forces, to withdraw,” he said.

With a self-assured firmness, al-Jaafari said Iraqis had proved they were willing to ‘sacrifice anything’ for democracy when 8.5 million risked their lives to vote last January. And despite suicide bombings in Baghdad on Thursday, he said car bombings have dropped from 12 to 14 a day to one a day or every other day. Growing support from Iraqis has generated new public cooperation and information — ‘more than we can handle’, he added. Tribes are now helpful in identifying ‘terrorists’, a word he repeatedly used.

“So why, when a few bands of criminals choose soft targets and blow up marketplaces and schools and hospitals, are we threatened and terrorized and feel victims to this? Why do we allow ourselves held captives or hostage?” he said. “Soldiers who have died have died for a worthy cause.” After meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, al-Jaafari stopped on Thursday night at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to meet injured US troops.

The other two keys to ending the insurgency are securing Iraq’s six borders, particularly with Syria, and activating a new judiciary so guerillas can be held to account, he said.

Al-Jaafari’s remarks come as Bush has been told privately by US generals that Iraq’s military is growing stronger and could allow US troops to start pulling out next year.

Aides say Bush intends to begin speaking more forcefully about Iraq’s transition and the progress in crafting a new government from scratch. He plans a major speech on Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of Iraq’s sovereignty. It will emphasize the importance of al-Jaafari’s success in meeting the six-month deadlines for a constitution, national referendum and elections for a permanent government, aides said.

With just seven weeks until a constitution is due, al-Jaafari also insisted that the Iraqis will make the deadline even though nothing has yet been written. “We know there are challenges and we know there are difficulties, but certainly the difficulties in writing a constitution will be not as severe or as intense as they were during the elections ... in putting together the government,” he said in the interview with The Post .

The Iraqi and US optimism comes in the face of growing concern among many analysts, and even some US officials, about the tight timing — and the prospect of extending the deadline until mid-2006. A six-month delay is allowed under Iraq’s temporary law, but experts fear it could fuel public disillusionment and the insurgency.

“They won’t meet the deadline. They took three months to form a government and they’ve barely managed to form a constitutional committee, which can’t meet as there’s no water or electricity in the parliament’s building. It’s very symbolic,” said Juan R.I. Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan.—Dawn-LAT/WP News Service