BAGHDAD, April 26: Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld flew in to Baghdad on Wednesday in a double push by Washington’s diplomatic and military chiefs to ensure Iraq’s new prime minister forms a national unity government.
Despatched by President George Bush just days after Nuri al Maliki was nominated to end months of deadlock among opposing ethnic and sectarian factions, Secretary of State Rice and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld stressed the need for a grand coalition to stem violence and restore prosperity.
Their meeting with Mr Maliki, who says he needs two weeks to name a cabinet, came a day after Al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al Zarqawi released an unprecedented video statement condemning Iraq’s leaders as puppets of the US occupiers and vowing to take the Sunni guerillas to victory in new offensives.
Speaking of a ‘turning point’ in Washington’s three-year-old project in Iraq, Ms Rice returned only three weeks after her last visit — a trip that heralded the eventual departure of the previous prime minister, the much-opposed Ibrahim al Jaafari.
The focus of meetings would be the need for a cabinet free of divisive sectarian figures, she said. Mr Rumsfeld said ministers must be chosen for their competence and honesty in what will be Iraq’s first full-term government since the US invasion.
Last week’s move by the dominant Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) to drop Mr Jaafari in favour of his close aide, Maliki, ended US frustration with the four months of deadlock that followed an election and gave Mr Maliki a month to form a government.
Previous cabinets, formed under US supervision, have reflected a need to divide jobs among key factions.
Ms Rice and Mr Rumsfeld also met re-appointed President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and his deputies.
Sunni and Kurdish leaders, who have joined Shias in warning that a failure to form a grand coalition risks turning mounting sectarian and ethnic violence into all-out civil war, say they are willing to serve under Mr Maliki, but not Mr Jaafari.
Mr Maliki himself, long an outspoken defender of the Shia position, spoke fluently in an hour-long television interview on Tuesday of the need to bring all communities into government and disband factional militias to prevent a conflict.
“His speech was a good beginning and a good step in the right direction,” said Hussein al Falluji, an official from the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament.
“A government that does not marginalise other groups will go a long way in finding real solutions for Iraq’s current crisis.”
Ms Rice said before her meetings: “The turning point is that Iraq now has its first permanent government of national unity and it gives Iraq a very real chance to deal with the obviously very vexing problems it has faced.”
In a mark of frustration felt in the United States over the delay in translating December’s election into a government, a cross-party group of US senators adopted a motion on Tuesday to make further US assistance conditional on Iraq’s leaders meeting constitutional deadlines for appointing a government.
With his own ratings falling and Republican supporters grumbling ahead of congressional elections in November, President George Bush seems keen to start pulling out troops.
But a sharp increase in sectarian killings by pro-government militias and guerillas since the bombing of a major shrine in February has put that withdrawal in jeopardy.
IRAQI FORCES: Mr Rumsfeld and a US commander, Gen George Casey, wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics of what Maliki’s appointment meant for their plans for sending some of the 133,000 US troops home this year. Gen Casey called it a ‘major step’. Mr Rumsfeld, who rubbished a suggestion he might quit after criticism from retired generals, dismissed criticism that the new Iraqi forces were not capable of taking over from Americans or of preventing a sectarian civil war.—Reuters
