AMMAN, 30 November 2006 — US President George W. Bush’s high-stakes summit with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was put off yesterday after public disclosure of US doubts about his capacity to control sectarian warfare. The White House said the two leaders would meet today.
The postponement was announced shortly after Bush arrived here for talks with Jordan’s King Abdallah and Maliki. Bush’s meeting with the king proceeded on schedule.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett denied that the move was a snub by Maliki or was related to the leak of a White House memo questioning the prime minister’s capacity for controlling violence in Iraq.
“Absolutely not,” Bartlett said. He said the king and the prime minister had met before Bush arrived from a NATO summit in Latvia. “It negated the purpose for a meeting of the three of them,” Bartlett said.
Bartlett said that last night’s three-way meeting had always been planned as “more of a social meeting” and that Bush and Maliki today would have a “robust” meeting on their own.
The president was expected to ask the embattled Iraqi prime minister how best to train Iraqi forces faster so they can shoulder more responsibility for halting the sectarian violence and, specifically, mending a gaping Sunni-Shiite divide.
Bush arrived here amid disclosure of a memo by a top White House adviser that raised doubts about Maliki’s ability to halt escalating sectarian violence in Iraq, where US involvement now exceeds the length of America’s participation in World War II.
“We will discuss the situation on the ground in his country, our ongoing efforts to transfer more responsibility to the Iraqi security forces, and the responsibility of other nations in the region to support the security and stability of Iraq,” Bush said Tuesday at the NATO summit.
“We’ll continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi lawmakers and Cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr suspended their participation in the Parliament and government in protest over Maliki’s summit with Bush.
In Syria, President Bashar Assad said his country will continue to challenge US efforts to exert control over the Middle East.
The White House has avoided saying that Bush will be pressuring Maliki at the meeting to do more to stop the bloodshed. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley says the Iraqi prime minister pushes himself — and that Bush will be listening to Maliki’s ideas, not imposing plans on him. But in a classified Nov. 8 memo following his Oct. 30 trip to Baghdad, Hadley expressed serious doubts about whether Maliki had the capacity to control the sectarian violence in Iraq, and recommended steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader’s position, The New York Times reported yesterday.
“The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action,” the memo said.
The White House did not dispute the accuracy of the memo, but a senior administration official said the document, taken as a whole, is an expression of support for Maliki. “You have a constant reiteration of the importance of strengthening the Maliki government, the need to work with him, to augment his capabilities,” the official said.
— With input from agencies.
