WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, 2 December 2006 — US President George W. Bush has scheduled talks with key Shiite and Sunni leaders of Iraq, the White House said yesterday, ahead of a potentially pivotal week for US strategy in the battered nation.
Bush will meet on Monday with powerful Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, days after showering praise on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki during talks in Jordan.
In January, Bush will welcome Iraq’s Vice President Tareq Al-Hashimi, a top Sunni leader, a White House official said.
But the aide denied suggestions accelerating US diplomacy had anything to do with the top-level bipartisan panel due to unveil eagerly awaited recommendations for changes to US strategy in Iraq on Wednesday.
New press leaks yesterday suggested that the commission, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, would recommend that almost all US combat troops leave the country by early 2008. The announcement came amid warnings by Hakim that if sectarian violence escalates to all out civil war in Iraq pitting Sunnis against Shiites it would spell disaster.
“The eruption of a sectarian war will not only burn everyone but it will also undermine the security of the entire region and lead to the unknown,” he told hundreds of worshippers in a rare sermon at Jordan’s largest mosque.
The White House has ordered its own a government-wide reassessment of US policy in Iraq, amid soaring sectarian violence, fears of all-out civil war and mounting domestic pressure to bring US troops home after opposition Democrats took control of the US Congress in the Nov. 7 elections.
Meanwhile, at least 1,847 Iraqis were slaughtered last month, officials said yesterday as embattled Premier Maliki vowed that local forces could take over the battered nation’s security in June 2007.
The unabated violence left at least 27 people dead yesterday, including 14 Kurdish farmers from the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border who were found massacred in a field.
The latest figures came as Baghdad echoed to the sound of machine gun fire for most yesterday as insurgents clashed with Iraqi troops in the Fadhil neighborhood. The battle left one Iraqi soldier dead and nine people wounded, including four soldiers, security officials said.
