Condi: Clock ticking for Maliki

Two days after President George Bush announced a 20,000 man surge of U.S. forces in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice told TIME in an interview on Friday that the Iraqi government of Nouri al Maliki could lose both popular support at home—and the backing of Washington—if it fails to establish control in Baghdad.

"The compelling forcing mechanism is that this government is not going to survive its own people if it doesn't take control of the situation in Baghdad," Rice said, adding, "And this unfolds over a period of time and so there's a quid pro quo here. We are prepared to do the augmentation and surge if they're prepared to live up to their obligations."

Rice said she opposed giving Maliki a hard deadline at this moment, but she emphasized that American patience is limited. "I think in the next few months you are going to know whether or not this is working," she said. "They bring forces in starting February 1st. They bring in another set of forces February 15th. And I think from then on you'll have a good sense of how this is unfolding. So it's not as if there is a date, at six months, we'll know and then we have to do something dramatic. This is going to happen over a period of time. So you've got time to adjust. You've got time to go to them and say, you're not getting it done."

Rice: U.S. won't 'pull the plug' on Iraq

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer

SHANNON, Ireland - Americans' skeptical view of the Iraq war won't change until they see progress there, but the United States won't "pull the plug" on the conflict, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

Rice would not detail any backup strategy if President Bush's new plan to turn around the war comes up short, or if the Iraq government fails to hold up its end.

"We're going to get an opportunity to see whether or not this is working, whether or not the Iraqis are living up to their obligations," Rice said Friday.

She decried what she called "the notion ... that, 'Are you just going to pull the plug?'"

"We're not pulling the plug on Iraq," she said.

Most Americans now say they do not support the war or approve of Bush's handling of it.

"What will convince the American people that there's going to be a good outcome here is changes on the ground," Rice said. "No poll is going to change until there is something to show."

The top U.S. diplomat spoke at the start of a Mideast trip designed partly to prod Iraq's neighbors to lend greater help to the struggling government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Bush administration is relying on al-Maliki for the success of the plan Bush announced Wednesday to make Baghdad safer from sectarian violence.

Bush on Friday sought support for his new Iraq military build up in telephone calls to Jordan's King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Rice will see both leaders in the next few days.

Rice is also road testing possible initiatives to nudge Israel and the Palestinians closer to a political accommodation. The United States wants to move more swiftly to shore up Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is locked in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas.

"I'm not coming with a proposal, I'm not coming with a plan," Rice said.

On Iraq, Bush's strategy to add 21,500 troops met the stiffest congressional opposition since the war began almost four years ago. Rice came in for some of the toughest questioning Thursday, from Democrats and erstwhile Republican supporters of the war.

At a tense hearing, furious senators referred to sinking public support for a war that has cost nearly $400 billion and taken more than 3,000 U.S. lives.

The reception was more hostile than the administration had expected, but Rice had a ready reply.

"I heard skepticism; I didn't hear alternatives that one can really pursue," she said Friday.

Rice said flagging support for the war at home does not weaken her hand abroad.

Arab allies regularly urge the United States to reinvigorate Israeli-Arab peace efforts as a start toward addressing problems elsewhere, including in Iraq and Iran.

Although Rice seemed eager to switch focus away from Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian problems may be equally difficult.

While being careful to avoid sounding overly optimistic, Rice said there is a new opportunity for progress and suggested she will reward Abbas for standing firm against Hamas. The Bush administration is asking Congress to approve $85 million to train and equip Abbas' security forces, and Rice did not rule out a bold stroke to propose rough boundaries of an eventual Palestinian state.

Abbas has repeatedly said he needs to be able to offer Palestinians a vision of a political future that makes the frustrating effort to seek peace seem worthwhile. Abbas has pledged to seek peace with Israel and last month held a much-anticipated meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

U.S officials are dismayed at the yearlong drift in peace efforts since Hamas won parliamentary elections and took control of much of the Palestinian government. Hamas refuses to renounce violence or recognize Israel, leading the West to cut off vital international aid.

Abbas was elected separately and retains his post, but he has limited power. He has been unable to negotiate a compromise unity government with Hamas, but he has improved his international standing.

The U.S. money for Abbas' security services would be a significant vote of confidence, because those forces have a troubled history of corruption and rights violations under Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070113/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/rice

Iraqi president to visit Syria on Sunday

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 12, 6:28 PM ET

DAMASCUS, Syria - Days after President Bush accused Syria of encouraging the violence in Iraq, President Jalal Talabani on Sunday will become the highest-level Iraqi official to visit this country in more than 24 years.

His visit, announced on Iraqi television and confirmed by a Talabani spokesman Friday, aims to seal the ties between the two neighbors after they restored diplomatic relations in December, cut in 1982 amid ideological disputes between the Syrian government and Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Iraqi president will arrive Sunday and stay for four or five days, Talabani's spokesman Kamaran Qaradaghi told the Associated Press. State-run Iraqiya television said Talabani will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad and sign security and economic agreements.

Qaradaghi would not elaborate on Talabani's goals for the visit. But the Iraqi president was expected to discuss security on the country's long desert border with Syria.

The United States and Iraqi officials accuse Damascus of allowing Sunni insurgents to cross the frontier freely to carry out attacks in Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — a more powerful political figure than Talabani, whose post is largely symbolic — has been cool to Damascus, insisting that Iraq's neighbors should stop meddling in Iraqi affairs or helping its foes.

On Wednesday, Bush lashed out at Syria — and its ally Iran — in a speech announcing plans to dispatch 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq to try to stabilize country.

Bush accused Syria and Iran of supporting the violence in Iraq, and vowed to break supply lines from them to Iraqi militants. He called on U.S. Arab allies to rally behind Iraq's Shiite-led government in what was seen in the Arab world as a move to isolate Syria and Iran.

Syria says it is doing all it can to patrol its border and blames the Americans and the Iraqis for not doing enough to monitor the porous frontier.

Talabani's visit is part of a diplomatic balancing act, as Baghdad tries to build relations with its powerful neighbors without antagonizing its chief patron, the United States.

The restoration of diplomatic ties between Iraq and Syria marked a warming of relations after years of hostility. Damascus quarreled with Saddam, and shunned the new Iraqi leadership that came to power after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Both Iraq's interior minister and parliament speaker have made recent trips to Syria. Iraq's Shiite-led government also has developed close ties with Shiite Iran, which has been at odds with the United States for nearly 30 years.

Syria broke diplomatic ties with Iraq in 1982, accusing it of inciting riots in Syria. The two countries were ruled by rival branches of the Arab nationalist Baath party, and Damascus sided with Iran in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Talabani spent considerable time in exile in Syria during Saddam's 23 years in power and has maintained good relations with Assad — as Talabani did with Assad's father, the late Syrian leader Hafez Assad.

____

AP writers Bassem Mroue in Baghdad and Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_syria

U.S. says Maliki knows time is running out

By Claudia Parsons

Fri Jan 12, 6:09 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said some Iraqi leaders had miscalculated before thinking U.S. support would go on unconditionally but now they realize the patience of the American people is running out.

In an interview with CNN broadcast on Friday, Khalilzad echoed comments by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government was living "on borrowed time." Khalilzad said Maliki realized diplomacy had not succeeded in dismantling militias and it was time for action.

President Bush said he planned to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq as part of a new direction in Iraq that also involved putting more pressure on Iraqis to solve their political differences and take over their own security.

U.S. lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled Congress hammered Bush's plan to send more troops, and many in Iraq questioned how much difference they can make. But Khalilzad said this time the Iraqi government was ready to take decisive action.

"The president has been very resolute from the get go (from the start) and some people here have miscalculated perhaps, thinking no matter what they do or do not do support will go on because of the rock solid stand the president has taken," Khalilzad told CNN.

"The president has sent a very good strong message that the patience of the American people is running out," he said.

Khalilzad said Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, had pledged his commitment to crack down on Shi'ite militias -- a key demand of Washington and the Sunni Arab minority who blame the militias for operating death squads.

NO SANCTUARY

Washington has identified the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as the greatest threat to security in Iraq. Maliki, who depends on Sadr's political movement for support in parliament and government, has struggled to rein in the Mehdi Army, despite numerous pledges to allow nobody but the armed forces to carry weapons.

Asked if this time Maliki would really go after the Mehdi Army, Khalilzad said: "He has pledged this to the president of the United States, there will be no sanctuary. He has said to me that he has given diplomacy a chance with the militias, now we have to do whatever is necessary to get the job done."

"This is the best chance they have to move and if they don't move they know that there's a lot at risk for them as well."

Maliki has promised a major new security plan for Baghdad that he said would crack down on armed groups regardless of sect or political affiliation. But with the sectarian loyalties of his police and army in question, success will be difficult.

Bombs, mortars and sectarian death squads have been killing hundreds of people every week and tens of thousands have fled their homes as the city, once a patchwork of mixed districts, has become more and more divided into sectarian enclaves.

Some of Bush's fellow Republicans joined newly empowered Democrats in voicing skepticism that dispatching 21,500 extra troops to help regain control of Baghdad would work. More than 3,000 U.S. troops have died since the March 2003 invasion.

American peace activists held the first of what they said would be thousands of protests, vowing to take to the airwaves and the Internet in a campaign to block the plan, which they said had fueled a fresh surge of anti-war sentiment.

A day after Bush vowed to disrupt what he called the "flow of support" from Iran and Syria for insurgent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's office said he would travel to Syria on Sunday for an official visit.

Democrats who want a phased withdrawal from Iraq to start in four to six months, lambasted Bush's plan.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) said he expected to have the votes, with the support of some Republicans, to pass a resolution opposing the new deployment, which would bring American troop levels in Iraq to more than 150,000.

Though such a resolution is nonbinding and merely reflects opposition in the Senate. "I think that (bipartisan passage) will be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq," Reid said.

(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming, Arshad Mohammed in Washington)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/iraq_dc

Rice says will hold Iraq PM to his promises

13 Jan 2007 18:01:45 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would hold Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to his promises to reduce sectarian violence and that it was now time to see results.

A day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed, Rice stepped up pressure on the premier as she began a Middle East tour to drum up support for President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.

Echoing previous remarks that Maliki's government was living on "borrowed time" and that America's patience was running out, Rice said the Iraqi government understood that success in a plan to secure Baghdad was "a very high priority".

"To say that your patience isn't limited is simply to say that the Iraqi government needs to start to show results," Rice told reporters before arriving in Israel on Saturday, according to a State Department transcript of her remarks.

"We're going to get an opportunity to see whether or not this is working, whether or not the Iraqis are living up to their obligations."

With Bush's critics saying his new strategy depends too heavily on Maliki keeping promises he failed to keep before, administration officials are piling pressure on Iraqi politicians to solve their differences and avert civil war.

Maliki has vowed to lead a Baghdad operation he says will hit not only insurgents from the once dominant Sunni minority but also militias loyal to fellow Shi'ites -- a key demand of Washington and Sunnis, who say Iran is backing Shi'ite gunmen.

Maliki, who leads a fractious coalition of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds, said on Saturday his government agreed with Bush's plan for Iraqis to lead the security push although some of his hard-line Shi'ite allies have opposed it.

At a Senate committee hearing, Gates said on Friday Maliki might have to quit if Iraqi political blocs withdrew their support over his failure to deliver. Following recent meetings between Bush and top Iraqi politicians, there have been reports that Washington is willing to back a new coalition.

"I think the first consequence that he has to face is the possibility that he'll lose his job," Gates said.

"There's some sense that ... there are beginning to be some people around that may say ... 'I can do better than he's doing,' in terms of ... making progress," he said.

Police found 31 bodies in Baghdad in the 24 hours to Saturday night, many tortured and shot dead, in a typical case of the sectarian violence that is forcing thousands to flee.

RICE WARNS IRAN

Two days after U.S. forces raided an Iranian government office in the Iraqi city of Arbil in the second such operation in a month, Rice repeated a warning by Bush that Washington will not tolerate Tehran's alleged support for armed groups in Iraq.

"I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs (bombs) and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with."

But she said Bush's order to target Iranians operating in Iraq did not mark a widening of the conflict.

"Obviously the president doesn't take options off the table, but I think that it's really fair to say that we believe this is something that can be done in Iraq."

Facing hostility from some fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Bush used his weekly radio address on Saturday to make clear he would not back off his plan to send more troops to Iraq and accused critics of failing to offer an alternative.

"Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," he said.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, a vocal critic of Bush's new strategy and a possible 2008 presidential hopeful, met Maliki and other officials during a one-day visit to the country on Saturday.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO358444.htm

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