WASHINGTON, Dec 2: Two days after returning from a key summit meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, US President George Bush urged opposition Democrats on Saturday to work with him in ending unabated violence in Iraq.
“Success in Iraq will require leaders in Washington -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- to come together and find greater consensus on the best path forward,” he said in his weekly radio address.
The Democrats -- who now control both chambers of the US Congress -- want the Bush administration to announce in next four to six months a schedule for withdrawing US troops from Iraq. The administration says that announcing such a schedule would hurt the US-backed Iraqi government and would strengthen religious militia operating there.
Mr Bush returned home on Thursday from Amman, Jordan, where he met Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and assured him that he was not going to withdraw US troops and will oppose partitioning Iraq on sectarian and ethnic lines.
In his radio address, Mr Bush said he had told Mr Maliki that `the success of the Iraqi government depends on the success of the Iraqi security forces’.
The training of Iraqi security forces has been steady, `yet we both agreed that we need to do more, and we need to do it faster’, he added.
Mr Bush has argued in the past that once Iraqi forces start shouldering security responsibilities, he will gradually withdraw US troops from Iraq.
The US president said that he had discussed with Mr Maliki the review of America’s strategy in Iraq being conducted by a bipartisan US panel and by the Pentagon and US generals in the field.
The bipartisan panel, led by former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, is expected to call for a withdrawal of almost all combat troops from Iraq by early 2008, while leaving some soldiers behind for training and support. The group is scheduled to announce its recommendations on Dec 6.
On Monday, Mr Bush is meeting a pro-Iranian Iraqi leader at the White House as part of his efforts to bring an end to unabated violence in Iraq.
Abdelaziz Hakim is a leader of one of the two main Shia parties in the governing United Iraqi Alliance. Next month, he will meet Iraqi Vice-President Tariq Hashimi, the head of the largest party representing the Sunni community.
Mr Hashimi was chosen to fill the Sunni seat in a power-sharing arrangement that puts Sunnis and Kurds in senior government positions under Mr Maliki. In the last seven months, Mr Hashimi has lost a sister and a brother to Iraq’s civil war.
Mr Hakim heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). It was established in Iran in 1982, providing a political home for Iraq’s Shia exiles there during the rule of Saddam Hussein. SCIRI today is part of the United Iraqi Alliance.
Given Mr Hakim’s role in SCIRI, his meeting with President Bush represents an attempt on the part of Washington to reach out to a leader with ties to Iran, even as the administration refuses to deal directly with the government in Tehran.
