Washington, Baghdad Brace Themselves for Iraq Policy Report

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WASHINGTON — Washington and Baghdad are bracing for the scheduled release of a bipartisan congressionally mandated report on Iraq policy scheduled to be released next week that is expected to recommend America negotiate with Iran and Syria.

The announcement yesterday that the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission would be released on December 6 came as a scheduled meeting in Amman, Jordan, between President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki was abruptly postponed for today.

Meanwhile in Dubai, Secretary of State Powell told a group of businessmen that Iraq had descended into civil war.

The Iraq Study Group, chaired by another former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former House International Relations Committee chairman, Lee Hamilton, will likely challenge the president’s current thinking on Iraq. Under discussion for the 10-person panel have been two recommendations: a timeline for the withdrawal of troops and renewed engagement with Iran and Syria. To date, Mr. Bush has publicly resisted both suggestions.

Nonetheless, the findings from the commission have almost been pre-endorsed by many inside the president’s own party, including Senator Lott, a Republican of Mississippi, who is the incoming minority whip.

The White House for its part is looking to dilute the recommendations from the Baker-Hamilton commission and has established an internal review of Iraq policy and pointed to another such policy report coming from the joint chiefs of staff of the military. The State Department has also started preparing possible forums to talk to Iran.

In this context, much is riding on today’s meeting between Messrs. Maliki and Bush in Amman. In Baghdad, the slate of legislators loyal to the popular Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr temporarily suspended their participation in the government in protest of the upcoming meeting with Mr. Bush.

But Mr. Maliki might have canceled yesterday’s meeting in protest of a leaked assessment of his presidency published yesterday by the New York Times. That assessment, drafted by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, concluded that America needed to support the premier for now and persuade him to end his political compact with Mr. Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has marauded through Baghdad killing Sunni Arabs.

The view among most of the advisers to the Baker Hamilton commission is that the way to restrain the Shiite death squads is to enlist the support of the Iranian regime in reining them in. American soldiers in Iraq have intercepted sophisticated weaponry and roadside bombs designed in Iran. The New York Sun yesterday disclosed the views of one of the advisers, Raymond Close, who predicted that the commission would call for a regional conference that includes Israel, and would trade Israeli concessions for Iranian and Syrian ones.

The commission is also likely to broach the prospect of a timeline for when America can begin to withdraw of troops from Iraq in a gambit to press Mr. Maliki to disband his country’s militias.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bush reiterated his view that he would not pull troops out of Iraq before “the mission is complete. “We’ll continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed,” the president said. “But there’s one thing I’m not going to do. I am not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

Yesterday, Senator Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, who is the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that the report “must tackle the issue of U.S. troop deployments. The best way to get the Iraqis to concentrate on making the hard political decisions and compromises is to make clear to them that the presence of our troops in their present large numbers is not open-ended.”

Mr. Biden, who is hawkish compared to other members of his party, has advised the Baker-Hamilton commission to suggest that America broker a political deal between Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds, giving the three main groups considerable autonomy but keeping a central government. The plan, he has said, would enable America to withdraw most of its soldiers by the end of 2007.


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