President Bush arrived in Jordan last night for talks with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, over the country’s security crisis. A preliminary meeting was abruptly cancelled after leaks of US doubts about Mr alMaliki’s leadership.
The mini-summit comes amid clear signals that the White House is losing patience with the Iraqi leader for failing to curb Shia militias blamed for much of the sectarian slaughter in his country.
Jordanian palace officials insisted that a planned three-way meeting with their host, King Abdullah of Jordan, was shelved only because the US President was “late, tired and had a packed schedule”. However, there was speculation that Mr al-Maliki was angered by a leaked memo from Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush’s National Security Adviser, which said that the Shia leader “wanted to be strong, but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so”.
Dan Bartlett, a White House adviser, denied that the cancellation was a snub by Mr alMaliki. Mr Bartlett said that the President and Prime Minister would have a “robust” meeting today. The encounter is expected to be a “give-and-take”, a US official said. Mr Bush’s arrival in the Jordanian capital was greeted by Islamist and leftist demonstrators burning the US flag and an effigy of the President, and waving banners saying “Welcome Terrorist”. The protest reflected anger across the Arab world and alarm among Sunni regimes that sectarian slaughter will inflame the region.
Ahead of the meeting the former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that Iraq had descended into civil war and urged world leaders to accept that “reality”. “I would call it a civil war,” he told a business forum in the United Arab Emirates. “I have been using it [civil war] because I like to face the reality,” he added.
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Iraq’s neighbours are concerned over Iran’s growing influence, and many believe that Mr al-Maliki is failing to rein in the Shia death squads. In a clear attempt to upstage the meeting, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was last night scathingly critical of Mr Bush’s foreign policy in a direct letter to the American people.
“Now that Iraq has a constitution and an independent assembly and government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?” he wrote in a five-page letter released by the Iranian UN mission in New York.
Just as Washington appears to be losing patience, so too do Iraq’s neighbours. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, said that a hasty American withdrawal could prompt King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to provide Iraqi Sunnis with money, weapons and logistical support.
Sunni regimes such as Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and the Emirates are also angry at signals that the US will extricate itself by making overtures to Iran and Syria. King Abdullah of Jordan is expected to voice the fears of these regimes during his meetings with Mr Bush.
One day in Iraq: 29.11.2006