Maliki shelves evening meeting with Bush
Source: Reuters
(Adds Bush-Abdullah dinner, details) By Caren Bohan and Suleiman al-Khalidi AMMAN, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A crisis meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan was postponed for a day following a report suggesting Washington lacked confidence in the Iraqi leader. U.S. and Iraqi officials denied the cancellation of an evening meeting on Wednesday in the Jordanian capital Amman was a snub by Maliki in response to a New York Times story on a leaked White House report criticising the Iraqi leader. In the Nov. 8 memo cited by the Times, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley told Bush that Maliki needed political help and a possible shake-up of his seven-month-old national unity government of hostile factions. It describes the Iraqi leader as a man who "wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so", and questions whether he shares Washington's vision for Iraq. "If so, is he able to curb those who seek Shi'ite hegemony or the reassertion of Sunni power?" the memo asks. The White House said on Wednesday it did have confidence in Maliki and wanted to strengthen his position. Bush did have a one-on-one meeting and dinner with King Abdullah of Jordan, who this week said "something dramatic" must come from the Amman talks on Iraq. In addition to the leaked memo, Maliki's trip to Amman had been clouded by an upsurge in violence, including a bomb attack in a Shi'ite neighborhood of Baghdad last week that killed more than 200 people and sparked waves of retaliatory killings. The Iraqi leader's standing had also been eroded by the loss of a key Shi'ite ally. Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the Mehdi Army militia, carried out his threat to boycott parliament and Maliki's coalition if the premier met the U.S. president. Iraqi and Jordanian officials said their countries had made the decision to cancel the Wednesday evening session that was to have included Bush, Maliki and Abdullah. Iraqi sources in Maliki's delegation said cancellation occurred because the Jordanians wanted to concentrate on the Palestinian issue and the Iraqis said they thought this might complicate the meeting. 'SOCIAL MEETING' The White House initially was at a loss to explain how the decision to cancel the meeting was communicated to Bush but an official later said the president was told about by his ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, while flying to Jordan from Riga, Latvia. "It was going to be more of a social meeting anyway," White House counsellor Dan Bartlett told reporters. "The president and prime minister Maliki will have a very robust and lengthy dialogue tomorrow morning." Bartlett said that Abdullah and Maliki had met earlier in the day and had a productive enough meeting that they felt there was no need for the trilateral. An official White House schedule released last weekend had said the format for the talks on Wednesday would be a meeting followed by a dinner involving all three leaders. But White House spokesman Tony Snow said the schedule had been incorrect and that the plan all along was for a meeting of the three and then a dinner to include only Bush and Abdullah. "We erred," Snow said. Ahead of Bush's trip to Jordan, Sadr's faction, which helped elect Maliki to his post, denounced the prime minister's decision to see the U.S. president as "a provocation to the Iraqi people". It was not clear how long the boycott would last. Bush, who arrived in Amman after attending a NATO summit in Latvia, is himself under growing pressure to change course to prevent Iraq dissolving in a maelstrom of sectarian strife and to secure an honourable exit for 140,000 U.S. troops. The crisis summit with Maliki had been hastily arranged and Bush also changed his schedule to see the Iraqi leader. While in Latvia, Bush vowed not to pull troops out "before the mission is complete". General Peter Pace, chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Bush in playing down growing signs that Iraq is already engulfed in civil war and instead accused al Qaeda of fomenting sectarian bloodshed. That view is not shared by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said on Wednesday Iraq had descended into civil war and urged world leaders to accept that "reality". Thursday's meetings are expected to be a give-and-take on how to improve the situation, and "not the president dictating terms," a U.S. official said. A bold announcement is not expected. Maliki and Bush said they would discuss transferring more control to Iraqi security forces and the role other countries in the region could play to stem bloodshed and chaos in Iraq. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Mariam Karouny in Amman and Alastair Macdonald and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)
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