By Ross Colvin and Dean Yates

BAGHDAD, April 29 (Reuters) - The political battle in Washington over a Democratic plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq is being exploited by al Qaeda, which has stepped up attacks to hasten a withdrawal, Iraq's foreign minister said on Sunday.

Hoshiyar Zebari said Iraq had become "entangled" in domestic politics in the United States, where there is growing impatience for progress in reconciling the country's warring sects.

U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed to veto a war spending bill that requires combat troops to begin withdrawing by Oct. 1. Congress, which is controlled by the Democrats, plans to send the bill to Bush on Tuesday.

"This plays out very badly here," Zebari said in an interview with Reuters, making the first substantive government comment on the political tussle.

"It shows the administration is not united. And everybody watches this development, al Qaeda, the anti-democratic forces who are fighting us."

He pointed to an increase in car bomb attacks blamed on al Qaeda that have caused the civilian death toll to stay high despite a major 10-week-old operation by U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, the epicentre of the violence.

"This recent escalation you have seen was expected, just to show the Baghdad security plan is not working. If this plan were to fail, then the next step is for the multinational forces to withdraw. That is their simple strategy," Zebari said.

BENCHMARKS

Bush's Republican administration, facing presidential elections in 2008 and mounting public pressure to show progress in the unpopular war, has set Iraq's government political benchmarks that it wants to see progress on by September.

It wants parliament to delay a two-month summer recess due to start in July to pass laws on sharing Iraq's oil wealth, easing a ban on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party holding office, and paving the way for provincial elections.

U.S. officials believe these measures will be crucial to bringing minority Sunni Arabs, the backbone of an insurgency, more firmly into the political process and isolating al Qaeda.

"Iraq is entangled now with electoral agendas in other countries, so demands have been made, benchmarks have been set. These pressures adversely affect developments here. Our enemies really exploit those differences," Zebari said.

He said the government had set up a high-level commission to drive the political process forward and make "concrete and not theatrical moves".

"We are mindful of the timetable ... We need to accelerate parliamentary work on these issues," he said, adding that he hoped parliament would make progress on the laws by September.

But he said the laws would have a big impact on the future of Iraq and it was only right that parliament should have time to debate them fully.

"We need to be patient here in Iraq. If you look back over the past four years ... there have been unbelievable changes. For these changes to take root you need to be patient."

"The problem is patience is in short supply in Washington and Europe. They are looking for quick fixes, immediate results. There are no quick fixes." (Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla)

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