RIGA, Latvia – Under intense pressure to change course, President Bush on Tuesday rejected suggestions Iraq has fallen into civil war and vowed not to pull U.S. troops out “until the mission is complete.”
At the opening of a NATO summit, Bush also urged allies to increase their forces in Afghanistan to confront a strengthening Taliban insurgency.
On the eve of his visit to Jordan for meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush portrayed the battles in both Afghanistan and Iraq as central fronts in a war “against the extremists who desire safe havens and are willing to kill innocents anywhere to achieve their objectives.”
The stakes in Iraq are huge for Bush. His war policies were repudiated in U.S. midterm elections that handed control of Congress to Democrats. A bipartisan blue-ribbon panel is about to issue a report proposing changes in the administration’s approach in Iraq. And al-Maliki’s government itself sometimes seems to be at cross purposes with Washington.
Bush set the stage for the Jordan talks with a speech at the NATO summit here and at an earlier news conference in neighboring Estonia. The president said he was flexible and eager to hear al-Maliki’s ideas on how to ease the violence.
“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” Bush declared in his speech. There are about 140,000 U.S. forces in Iraq.
Earlier, speaking with reporters in Tallinn during a joint news conference with Estonia’s president, Bush would not debate whether Iraq had fallen into civil war and blamed the increasing bloodshed on a pattern of sectarian violence that he said was set in motion last winter by al-Qaida followers.
“I’m going to bring this subject up, of course, with Prime Minister Maliki,” Bush said. “My questions to him will be: What do you need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?” Bush has been coming under increasing pressure, both overseas and at home, to reach out more to other countries, particularly to Syria and Iran to help with a solution in Iraq.
Such a recommendation may be among those issued by the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. The group is expected to finish its work next month.
Bush has resisted such talks, and he renewed a warning on Tuesday to both Iran and Syria not to meddle in Iraq. Still, al-Maliki’s government itself has made overtures to both countries.
Meanwhile, NATO was divided on deploying more troops to Afghanistan’s volatile south, with Germany resisting any permanently expanded presence and Canada complaining of bearing the brunt of an increasingly bloody mission.
President Bush called the Afghanistan mission, which has mobilized 32,800 troops, NATO’s No. 1 operation. Defeating Taliban forces, he said, “will require the full commitment of our alliance.”
“The commanders on the ground must have the resources and flexibility they need to do their jobs,” Bush said, crediting the alliance for helping Afghanistan go from “a totalitarian nightmare” to stability and steadily growing prosperity.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear that her country would not permanently expand its 2,900-strong force, though she said German forces could be deployed in the south in an emergency. Canada’s foreign minister warned that public support will fade if other countries don’t relax restrictions on use of their troops and help Canadian forces in the south.
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