Nation & World

<< Previous   of   Next >> Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press  (click to enlarge) An Iraqi teenager keeps an eye on a U.S. soldier during a visit to the boy's home in the Shiite village of Sebta in Iraq's volatile Diyala province on Friday.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Do you have a news tip? newstips@heraldnet.com | 425.339.3400   Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008 Bush agrees to a 'time horizon' for U.S. troops in Iraq The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Iraq's prime minister have agreed to set a "time horizon" for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq as part of a long-term security accord they are trying to negotiate, White House officials said Friday. The decision, reached during a videoconference Thursday between Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, marks the culmination of a gradual but significant shift for the president, who has adamantly fought -- and even ridiculed -- efforts by congressional Democrats to impose what he described as artificial timetables for withdrawing U.S. forces. In recent weeks, Bush and senior officials have hinted that they would be open to "aspirational" goals for removing U.S. troops, as Maliki and other Iraqi politicians have voiced increasing discontent with the idea of an open-ended U.S. troop presence in their country. The White House also has been under pressure from top military officers to make more U.S. forces available for the war in Afghanistan, and that would be possible only by reducing the number of troops in Iraq, administration officials said. U.S. troop levels there have been decreasing in recent months, as they return to the 15 combat brigades present before Bush ordered a troop increase last year. Senior military officials have made clear that they expect troop levels in Iraq to drop even further this fall, following a 45-day period of assessment by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. In a statement issued Friday, after the conversation between Bush and Maliki, the White House went further than it has in previous official statements to indicate that it shares that expectation. "In the area of security cooperation, the president and the prime minister agreed that improving conditions should allow for the agreements now under negotiation to include a general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals," the statement said. It said those goals include turning over more control to Iraqi security forces and "the further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq." An Iraqi government spokesman confirmed that Iraq and the United States had agreed "to specify a time horizon to achieve a full handover of security responsibility to the Iraqi forces in order to decrease American forces and allow for its withdrawal from Iraq."

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