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Bush decides to hold off presenting Iraq
strategy until early next year
13.12.2006
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December 13, 2006
WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday
that President Bush would delay presenting any new
strategy for Iraq until early next year, as
officials suggested that Bush's advisers were locked
in internal debates about how to proceed.
The absence of an immediate, new U.S. plan for Iraq
is adding to anxiety among Iraq's moderate neighbors,
who identify with the country's minority Sunni Arab
population, and has opened the way for new proposals
from many quarters, in Iraq as well as in
Washington, about the next steps.
Several administration officials said Bush had
concluded that the decisions about troops, political
pressure and diplomacy were too complicated to lay
out before Christmas.
The White House decision prompted criticism from
Democratic congressional leaders and from at least
one Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, who said Bush
was failing to show sufficient urgency about Iraq
despite months of escalating violence.
Among the complicated debates under way within the
administration, is the question of whether the
United States should dispatch more U.S. troops to
Baghdad as part of a short-term surge aimed at
quashing such attacks.
The idea of a surge has been raised repeatedly by
Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, but
has prompted skepticism from commanders on the
ground that such a move would not be effective.
A central thrust of the discussions at all levels of
the administration is how to pressure Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki to move faster to provide basic
services and quell sectarian violence — some of
which stems from his powerful supporter, the Shiite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — and whether to force him to
meet certain benchmarks or face penalties and
rewards, also to be determined.
The administration is also debating whether to back
a Shiite government in the conflict with the Sunnis,
or to seek a new strategy for achieving national
reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite factions
that would be intended to expand the political base
of al-Maliki, at al-Sadr's expense.
Some members of the administration, including some
in Vice President Dick Cheney's office have argued
that the administration needs to provide clear
support to a strong Shiite majority government; the
State Department views that as a recipe for
perpetual civil war.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has instead
advocated a proposal intended to woo centrist Sunni
leaders to al-Maliki's side, including provincial
leaders.
One senior administration official said that reports
of internal arguments on this issue were "overblown"
because "everyone believes in national
reconciliation."
nytimes com
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