[NYTr] US political drumbeat against Iraqi PM builds

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dave Muller (aouthnews)

AFP - Aug 26, 2007

US political drumbeat against Iraqi PM builds

by Jitendra Joshi

Top US lawmakers from across the political divide intensified pressure 
Sunday on embattled Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki and called for US
troops to begin exiting the country.

Republican John Warner, one of the Senate's most influential voices on 
military affairs, amplified his bombshell demand of last week that 
President George W. Bush should start a limited troop withdrawal from 
Iraq by Christmas.

"Our troops have performed magnificently, under brilliant leadership, 
and have done precisely as the president asked," he told NBC television.

"But the government, under the leadership of Maliki and other Iraqi 
leaders, have totally failed to put the other part of that partnership 
in place, namely deliver greater security."

Bush last Wednesday defended Iraq's beleaguered prime minister as "a 
good man with a difficult job," seeking to dispel any sense that 
Washington is distancing itself from the government in Baghdad.

But Democratic Senator Jack Reed echoed Warner in arguing that the 
Maliki government had failed on key political benchmarks such as an oil 
revenues law and reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects.

"I think we have a right to be critical of a government that is not 
doing what a government must do -- protect its own people, make 
difficult decisions that in the long run will provide for the safety
and security of the Iraqi people," Reed said on Fox News Sunday.

But the Democrat warned against personalizing the issue of Iraq's 
leadership, after Maliki lashed out at US politicians calling for him
to go and demanded that France apologize for also seeking to turf him
out of office.

In an interview with the US magazine Newsweek, French Foreign Minister 
Bernard Kouchner said he had told US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice that Maliki has "got to be replaced."

That came after two Democratic US senators, Carl Levin and presidential 
hopeful Hillary Clinton, urged Iraqi lawmakers to choose someone else
to lead the fractured ruling coalition and seek faster national
reconciliation.

Former senator and 2008 Democratic hopeful John Edwards said Maliki's 
anger at the US attacks was misplaced.

"I think that Maliki should quit worrying about Democrats and the 
presidential campaign in America and start worrying about what he needs 
to do in his own country," he told CBS.

Speaking on CNN while drumming up support in Washington for an 
alternative government, former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi called 
on the Bush administration to reexamine its pro-Maliki stance.

Allawi, whose mixed Sunni-Shiite party joined a boycott of Maliki's 
government earlier this month, accused it of stoking sectarian violence 
and made clear he would be ready to return to politics if Maliki leaves.

"I lost my confidence ... in the process which is ongoing in Iraq,
which is based on sectarianism, it's based on supporting militias to
take the rule of law in their hands," Allawi said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said "the Iraqi government is 
still pretty much a disaster," but appealed for patience before a 
make-or-break report due next month from US military and diplomatic 
leaders in Iraq.

The dissident views now being expressed by prominent Republican figures 
like Warner have intensified the pressure on the Bush administration
for a change of course in Iraq as the mid-September report looms.

Warner rejected US administration criticism that his call for a
symbolic troop drawdown could trigger deeper sectarian carnage in Iraq.

He said he was trying to get the attention of Bush and the US public
"to bring some type of decisive pressure upon this (Iraqi) government
to deliver on the reconciliation."

National reconciliation would bring greater stability to Iraq than "all 
the bullets and the arms together," Warner said.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, another Democratic White House 
contender, said the "Maliki government is falling apart" with no 
discernible progress on security and reconciliation.

"You've got Maliki flirting with Iran right now. I mean, is this guy
our ally? This is an incompetent government, and now we're starting to
shift the blame to the Maliki government," Richardson added.

                             ***

McClatchy - Aug 25, 2007

Iraqi prime minister's isolation growing

By Leila Fadel

BAGHDAD, Iraq  Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, harshly criticized by 
Washington politicians last week for failing to bring about 
reconciliation among Iraq's political and ethnic factions, is 
increasingly isolated among his own countrymen as well.

He has lost the Shiite Muslim power base that brought him to power. 
Analysts say his support among Kurds could easily vanish, too, if the 
Kurds receive the go-ahead from the Bush administration. Nearly half of 
his cabinet ministers have resigned their posts or are refusing to 
participate in cabinet meetings.

Many say he is on his last legs as prime minister.

"He has to resign," said Salim Abdullah, a leading member of the Iraqi 
Accordance Front, the Sunni alliance that officially withdrew its 
ministers from the government earlier this month. "We have nothing 
against Maliki as a person but there are reasons he failed. His
advisors are yes men and he doesn't have the authority to do anything."

Whether Maliki will actually be removed from office won't be known
until Iraq's parliament comes back from its summer break next month.
Replacing him may be difficult.

Maliki was a compromise candidate when he was named prime minister 16 
months ago after weeks of indecision. No popular consensus candidate is 
evident and Iraq's fractious parliament is, if anything, more divided 
than it was in the heady months after the United Iraqi Alliance, the 
Shiite coalition, almost won a majority in Iraq's 2006 elections.

A prolonged standoff over Maliki's fate or the selection of a new prime 
minister would hardly improve government performance, which U.S. 
Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week called "extremely disappointing."

It is clear now that Crocker and U.S. military commander Gen. David 
Petraues will offer little hope of political reconciliation in Iraq
when they appear before Congress in mid September to provide their
assessment of the situation here. A report by the country's
intelligence community, made public on Thursday, said it was likely
Maliki would get even weaker in the next 12 months.

Maliki is leader of the Dawa party, a Shiite religious party that is
the smallest and least powerful of Iraq's Shiite alliance. He was
selected as prime minister only after the supporters of firebrand
cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed to back him over the candidate of the
Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, headed by Abdul Aziz al Hakim. Maliki
won the balloting among the Shiite parties by one vote.

The Sadrists, who make up the largest single bloc in parliament, have 
broken with Maliki over the prime minister's seeming endorsement of
U.S. actions against Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. They've withdrawn their
six cabinet ministers and now liken Maliki to Saddam Hussein.

On Friday the Sadrists threatened to bring criminal charges against 
Maliki, who they said was personally responsible for a U.S. raid in 
Baghdad's Shoala neighborhood that they say killed 20 people, including 
women and children. The U.S. has placed the death toll at eight, saying 
the dead were rebels who'd fired on American troops.

Maliki "is commander in chief of the Iraq forces and upon him lies the 
responsibility of protecting civilians," said Nassar al Rubaie, the
head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament. "We see the Iraqi government
has weakened and submitted to the occupation ... It's comparable to the 
bloody regime of Saddam."

Analysts searching for an explanation to why Maliki's government is in 
such disarray cite a number of factors. One American military officer 
said Maliki still behaves as if he were an opposition leader, not the 
head of government. He's surrounded himself with inept yes men in a 
reflection possibly of Dawa's long years as an illegal and underground 
political party.

Maliki may be philosophically opposed to making the kinds of
concessions U.S. officials feel are necessary to bring about
Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. Even before he became prime minister,
Maliki was known as a hard-line Shiite. Now as prime minister, he still
fears that Shiites, finally on top after centuries of oppression, will
lose power to Sunnis, U.S. officials here say. Many say they are still
uncertain whether Maliki wants an Iraq where Sunnis and Shiites would
be treated as equals.

Even in the best of worlds, Maliki was dealt a difficult hand. Iraq's 
government was cobbled together from a variety of factions and his 
cabinet ministers were forced upon him by political parties, rather
than being people Maliki himself had selected.

Sadiq al Rikabi, a top Maliki advisor who traveled with him to Syria 
last weekend, said it's unfair for Iraq's political stasis to be blamed 
on one man. In the new democracy the crisis must be blamed on all 
political players.

"This is not a dictatorship," he said. "This is a democracy and this 
political crisis must be dealt with by all the political leaders, not 
one person"

Even Maliki's detractors agree. The failure, said Ali Hatem al
Suleiman, the prince of the Dulaim, Iraq's largest Sunni tribe, lies in
a system designed to remain in political paralysis as each sect and
ethnic group defend their own interests.

"Maliki is like a pen with two closed fists around it. Every finger is
a party, how can the pen write?" he asked.

Still, many Iraqis predict that Maliki's premiership is nearing its
end. One official said his advisors are looking for other government 
positions, predicting their impending unemployment.

Analysts and some Iraqi officials say that Maliki is a convenient 
scapegoat for a failed American political project in Iraq.

"Somebody has to take the fall for a failed surge," said Bruce Riedel,
a former CIA analyst now with the Brookings Institution, a center-left 
policy think tank in Washington. "Mr. Maliki is a convenient scapegoat 
to blame...Of course, it begs the question what are we going to do to 
replace Maliki. There are no obvious replacements."

McClatchy Newspapers 2007


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