April 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush dispatched his two top officials on Iraq to Baghdad to deliver a clear message: It is time for Iraqis to take control of their destiny and form a government.
Iraqis need to ``get a government that is up and running,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today at a short briefing with the media in Baghdad after meeting former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi this morning.
Rice said yesterday when she arrived in the Iraqi capital it is a ``high priority'' for the prime minister-designate, Jawad al-Maliki, and his team to abolish the private armies that threaten to tear Iraq apart along religious lines. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who joined Rice in Baghdad for the talks in a fortress-like compound, made the same point.
Iraqi unity and security are needed before the start of an American military withdrawal, U.S. officials say. The U.S. commander in the country, General George Casey, wouldn't specify yesterday when a pullout of the 133,000 troops might begin, only that his ``general timeline'' is intact.
The ``main problem we have seen in the past two months is the sectarian violence, which is new and troubling,'' said James Jeffrey, Rice's top adviser on Iraq, in an interview after appearing before Congress yesterday. ``In terms of the insurgency, we don't see any significant increase.''
Asked if Iraq was in a state of civil war today, Rice responded Iraqis are ``determined they will not be torn apart.
Insurgent Attacks
Rice, who appeared at the press briefing with Rumself, Casey and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, also met embassy officials and others involved in reconstruction in the country. Rice met Iraqi political leaders yesterday. She left Baghdad airport about noon local time to visit Bulgaria. Rumsfeld was scheduled to leave about 15 minutes later.
Insurgent attacks such as roadside bombs against the U.S.- led military coalition peaked in October, according to government data. Sectarian killings have become the new threat. Hundreds of Iraqis have died since late February in violence between Shiites and Sunnis touched off after a mosque sacred to Shiites in Samarra, Iraq, was bombed.
As of yesterday, 2,388 U.S. military personnel had died in the war, whose cost for U.S. taxpayers may rise to $8 billion a month if an ``emergency'' spending package is approved by Congress, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. That would be an 84 percent increase from the spending rate three years ago, at the start of the conflict.
Political Wrangling
After four months of political wrangling, Iraq's politicians finally agreed on a leader this month, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani put forth al-Maliki, a Shiite, on April 22 to be the new prime minister. He will begin to form a permanent government that will serve a four-year term.
Al-Maliki told Rice and Rumsfeld that he would work for cooperation among the country's ethnic and religious factions. ``The end result of that will be something called Iraq,'' he said through an interpreter.
In addition to al-Maliki, Rice met yesterday with Talabani, a Kurdish leader; Adel Abdel Mahdi, a Shiite and interim vice president; and Tariq al-Hashemi, head of the largest Sunni Arab political coalition.
``It's clear they have come to reasonable understandings about what the Iraqi people expect of them,'' Rumsfeld said at a briefing with reporters.
Al-Maliki was chosen by the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite bloc that won the most votes in December parliamentary elections. The Bush administration welcomed his appointment because he has the backing of the largest minority groups, the Kurds and Sunnis.
Next Hurdle
The U.S. is pressing al-Maliki to appoint ``non-sectarian'' figures as Defense and Interior ministers as part of an effort to reduce inter-religious strife among militias.
Iraq's next hurdle is to hammer out a final version of its constitution, one analyst noted. Fights over the sharing of oil revenue and the extent of Kurdish self-government in northern Iraq are among the obstacles to completion of the charter.
``The sectarian violence is likely to get worse before it gets better, because the jockeying over the constitution is in itself going to incite violence,'' said Steven Simon, a counterterrorism expert at the White House National Security Council in the Clinton administration and an author of ``The Age of Sacred Terror'' and ``The Next Attack.''
``We will have to try to help the Iraqis maintain order as best we can, certainly through the end of this administration,'' said Simon, who is studying Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
The Shiite Badr organization in southern Iraq, the Shiite Mahdi Army in central and southern Iraq and the Kurdish forces in the north all pose a challenge to national unity, the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, David M. Walker, told Congress this week.
Hobbled Economy
Iraq's oil-based economy remains hobbled by attacks and corruption, according to the GAO. The U.S. goal is 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi production. In March, the country's output was 1.79 million barrels a day, according to Bloomberg estimates, down from 2.6 million barrels before the war in 2003.
Iraq may export 2 million barrels a day by Dec. 31, Oil Minister Hashem al-Hashimi told reporters in Doha, Qatar, this week. Iraq has the world's third-biggest reserves of crude.
``Iraqis have set $6 billion aside'' to fund reconstruction, and ``they ought to be able to put a great deal into their oil, electrical and other systems,'' Jeffrey said.
While the U.S. is eager to pull back so al-Maliki and his government can exert their influence, the American presence will loom over the country.
Cranes hover above a construction site on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad for a new U.S. Embassy facility that will host the biggest American diplomatic mission in the world.
``The president wanted us to come out and make certain that the United States is ready to provide whatever help we can to the new Iraqi government,'' Rice said.
