Word: baker
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Explaining the report of his Iraq Study Group to Congress on Thursday, former Secretary of State James Baker stressed that its recommendations need to be taken as a whole, rather than cherry-picked. "I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad, saying, 'I like this, but I don't like that,'" Baker told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It's a comprehensive strategy designed to deal with the problems in Iraq, but also to deal with other problems in the region. These are interdependent recommendations...
...President Bush plainly had other ideas, telling a press conference he was sure Baker and Lee Hamilton didn't expect him to embrace all of their recommendations. Bush made clear, for example, that he has no intention of following the Baker-Hamilton proposal for a rapid move to engage Iran and Syria in a process aimed at stabilizing Iraq. Instead, he simply reiterated his Administration's preconditions for talking to those two nations: Iran must first suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Bush said, while Syria would have to stop interfering in Lebanon...
...such cooperation. On the question of talking to Tehran and Damascus, moreover, President Bush certainly has the backing of a number of legislators from both sides of the aisle, who have questioned whether Iran and Syria would have any inclination to help out the U.S. in Iraq. Baker would agree that they're not about to help out just to be nice, but his commission - which interviewed senior figures in both regimes - believes their cooperation can be won on the basis of enlightened self-interest. Still, they would need an incentive to cooperate, which would necessitate the sort of diplomatic...
...legislation setting up such blue-ribbon panels has a clause specifying that congressional Democratic and Republican leaders will have a hand in picking members. But the measure creating this panel, sponsored by G.O.P. Congressman Frank Wolf, left those choices up to the co-chairs, former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton. Pelosi "didn't think the commission was constituted properly," says a friend. "That annoyed...
...Baker and Hamilton also faced a grilling at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, where Connecticut Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins questioned one of their key recommendations: to open a diplomatic dialogue with Iran. "I'm skeptical that it's realistic to think that Iran wants to help the United States succeed in Iraq," Lieberman said...