Word: maliki
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...forces into Iraq was a political strategy, not a military campaign. The idea, as framed by U.S. military commanders in Iraq and policy-makers in Washington, was to have U.S. forces hold down violence in Iraq long enough to allow the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to press ahead with national reconciliation efforts. Those efforts, everyone hoped, would begin to diffuse Iraq's sectarian tensions enough to keep them from flaring up again when U.S. troops inevitably pulled back...
...while the security situation in Iraq has arguably improved, the political side has deteriorated to its worst state of disarray since Maliki took office. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, speaking to reporters Tuesday in the Green Zone, was blunt in his bleak assessment. "Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned - to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," said Crocker, who echoed rising voices of discontent in Washington. "Our support is not a blank check...
Crocker and Iraq watchers in Washington seem to be pinning much on political talks in Baghdad, where Maliki has been huddling with key leadership figures from the country's factions in recent days. Last week Maliki, following the refusal of key Sunni leaders to resume participation in the government, called an emergency political summit. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, one of the last prominent Sunni figures willing to be seen talking to the Shi'ite Maliki, was summoned. So was Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi as well as Massoud Barzani, president...
Days of closed-door meetings have ensued and are expected to continue through the week, perhaps longer. At bottom the issue is Maliki's inability thus far to forge a compromise with Sunni factions, who accuse Maliki, with good reason, of pursuing a sectarian agenda. But the prospects for success of the talks are dim. No signs of compromise have emerged despite days of meetings. And if Maliki's government remains shunned by Sunni leadership when the talks finally end, the political reconciliation the surge was meant to spur will have gone backward, not forward...
...Karzai and Maliki statements highlight a key problem facing those who seek a more aggressive U.S. posture towards Iran: Outside of Israel, there's very little international support for confronting Tehran. It's not that European and Arab allies don't share U.S. concerns over Iran's increasingly assertive regional role, or over the fact that its civilian nuclear energy program will eventually put nuclear weapons within easy reach of the Islamic Republic. But neither the Europeans nor the Arabs see much good being achieved by either economic isolation or military action against Iran...