Rice: Iraqi reconciliation making remarkable progress

US SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday said Iraq’s national reconciliation has moved along “quite remarkably”, citing a new law that lets thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party reclaim government jobs or pensions.

Ms Rice, who split off from President George W Bush’s Middle East tour for a visit to Baghdad, said the Iraqi parliament’s approval on Saturday of the US-sought benchmark law was a first step and showed that last year’s “surge” of American forces was paying dividends.

“It is clearly a step forward for national reconciliation — a step forward for healing the wounds of the past, and it will have to be followed up by implementation that is in the same spirit of national reconciliation,” she said during a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Iraqi officials said Ms Rice warned Iraqi leaders they should not pass up a “golden opportunity” during Mr Bush’s last year in office to intensify their efforts for national reconciliation.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ms Rice also told them that the formation of a “national unity” government should be a top priority for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Mr Al-Maliki’s government, dominated by Shi’ite Muslims, has promoted a Shi’ite agenda and has been slow to include Sunnis in the police and other national groups as they have formed groups to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.

Meanwhile, in an interview published yesterday by The New York Times, Iraq’s defence minister said the country would not be able to assume full responsibility for internal security until 2012 and be unable to defend its borders until at least 2018. “In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020,” the minister, Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, was quoted as saying.

Ms Rice left Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to personally convey Mr Bush’s encouragement about signs of progress in Baghdad.

Although national reconciliation “has not always moved as fast as some of us sitting in Washington would like, it has certainly moved and, given the legacy, history and stains of tyranny, it has been quite remarkable,” she said.

Mr Bush said Ms Rice could “help push the momentum by her very presence” and that he himself would not go to Iraq while travelling in the region. There had been widespread speculation he would make a visit.