Word: baghdad
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...Iran, Iraq is but one front in a complex power game with the U.S. And while the two sides were meeting in Baghdad on Tuesday, there was also activity on a second key front - in Vienna, where Iranian negotiators met with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdogs, to discuss plans for inspectors to return to Iran next week. IAEA officials were upbeat about what they said was a "serious and substantial" agreement reached in talks in Tehran two weeks ago, to develop a plan of action in which Iran would settle all outstanding concerns raised...
Forget the "benchmarks" that Baghdad's politicians are showing little inclination to meet; the best hope in recent memory for national reconciliation in Iraq came Wednesday in the form of a shootout - not your conventional sectarian or insurgent affair, but a series of penalty kicks that settled an Asian cup soccer semifinal in Iraq's favor. Iraq's upset victory over highly rated South Korea has earned it a showdown on Sunday against - boy, do the gods of soccer ever have a wicked sense of humor - Saudi Arabia. The news drew tens of thousands of Iraqis of all stripes...
Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division are digging into an area where American troops have had little presence in the four years since the U.S. invasion. Madain hugs the Tigris River about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. Its relatively small population once made it an afterthought for the over-stretched American units in and around Baghdad. Now, with the troop surge under way in Baghdad, the U.S. hopes that an increased presence in places like Madain will deny insurgents and militiamen safe havens on the outskirts of the capital...
...Four years later sectarian divisions in Iraqi society and the mainly Shi'a Iraqi security forces are largely driving the conflict. Marr, a 20-year Army veteran, confronts that problem with the heavily Shi'ite police unit he works with in this dusty farming community 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. "It is difficult to get people to reconcile when they can't get past 'the National Police are Shi'a and I'm not,'" he said...
There is little he can do at ground level to change the National Police - its recruiting and staffing are handled in Baghdad by the Shi'ite-dominated Ministry of Interior. "What's the long-term goal for what they're going to do with those guys?" Marr asked. "I don't really know...