US wants larger role for Iraq govt: Timetable being prepared
By Our Correspondent
NEW YORK, Oct 22: With mounting US casualties in Baghdad — 73 reported by Saturday — the Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials told the New York Times.
The newspaper reported on Sunday that details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilise the country.
Although the plan would not threaten Mr Maliki with a withdrawal of American troops, several officials said the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other penalties if Iraq balked at adopting it or failed to meet critical benchmarks within it, the newspaper said.
A senior Pentagon official involved in drafting the blueprint told Times that Iraqi officials were being consulted as the plan evolved and would be invited to sign off on the milestones before the end of the year. But he added: “If the Iraqis fail to come back to us on this, we would have to conduct a reassessment” of the American strategy in Iraq.
In a statement issued on Saturday night, a White House spokeswoman, Nicole Guillemard, said the Times’s account was “not accurate,” but did not specify what officials found to be inaccurate.
The plan is being formulated by Gen George W. Casey Jr. and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the top military and civilian officials in Iraq, as well as by Pentagon officials.
