Iraqi Security a Key Topic at Bush Meeting

06/24/2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Abraham al-Jaafari are measuring progress and weighing future challenges in Iraq at a time when U.S. public support for the war is slumping, Iraqis are dying in car bombings and lawmakers are pressing for a timeline for U.S. withdrawal.

In an Oval Office meeting Friday, both leaders were to underscore work being done to train Iraqi security forces - a precursor to bringing U.S. troops home - as well as efforts to draft a constitution and rebuild a nation still wracked by a violent insurgency more than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Al-Jaafari confidently predicted Thursday that a constitution to guide his country toward democracy would be concluded by the end of August and then ratified in a popular referendum.

“We are going to do it within two months,” al-Jaafari said as he inspected the U.S. Constitution in the dimly lit, cool rotunda of the National Archives. Asked if it would be approved by the Iraqi people in the fall, he replied, “Yes.”

In the meantime, the U.S.-led multinational force must stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces are fully prepared to defend the country by themselves, al-Jaafari said.

Setting of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces would be a sign of weakness, he said. “The country would be open to increased terrorist activity,” he told the private Council on Foreign Relations.

Bush’s meeting with the Iraqi leader comes just ahead of the one-year anniversary next Tuesday of the transfer of sovereignty, an event Bush will mark with a speech at a yet-to-be disclosed site outside Washington.

“There are challenges that lie ahead, and I expect that the two leaders will be talking about those challenges,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “But the Iraqi people have shown, through their courage, that they are determined to meet their objectives.”

Al-Jaafari made a stop at the White House on Thursday to review strategy with Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. He went to the archives, met with congressional leaders on Capitol Hill and visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center to express gratitude to U.S. troops wounded in his country.

The White House meeting is being held against the backdrop of growing concern among Americans about an engagement that has claimed the lives of more than 1,700 American troops.

Foreign policy had typically given Bush his highest scores with the public, but that has changed. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month found just 41 percent of adults supported his handling of the Iraq war, a new low.

There have been 479 car bombs in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004, according to an AP count. At least 2,174 people have been killed and 5,520 have been wounded.

Continued bloodshed underscores comments from the top American commander in the Persian Gulf, who told lawmakers on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency has not grown weaker over the past six months.

“I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago,” Gen. John Abizaid said during a contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “There’s a lot of work to be done against the insurgency.”

The testimony undercut Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent assertion that the insurgency was in its “last throes.”

Asked whether he wanted to revise his comment, Cheney told CNN on Thursday, “No, but I’d be happy to explain what I meant by that.”

“I think there will be a lot of violence, a lot of bloodshed, because I think the terrorists will do everything they can to try to dispute that process (of training security forces),” Cheney said. “But I think it is well under way. I think it’s going to be accomplished, that we will, in fact, succeed in getting a democracy established in Iraq. And I think when we do, that will be the end of the insurgency.”

At the committee hearing, Abizaid, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other defense officials were grilled about how long U.S. troops would be in Iraq. Some lawmakers have proposed setting a timetable for U.S. withdrawal - an idea that Rumsfeld said would be a mistake. He insisted that U.S. troops were making progress. “Those who say we are losing this war are wrong,” Rumsfeld said.

Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., told Rumsfeld he feared that enough Iraqis were not turning their back on insurgents.

“If they don’t start trending in that way, I’m deeply concerned that we are looking at a long-term quagmire,” McHugh said.