US: No plan for strategy shift on Iraq

US President George Bush’s top national security adviser said today that the Iraqis are starting to make the tough decisions needed to halt rising sectarian violence, but must do more to secure the nation – and do it quickly.

“I think they’ve got to do more and they’ve got to do it faster,” National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said in a radio interview at the White House.

“And I think if you talked to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, he would say to you the same thing.”

With just two weeks until key congressional elections, the White House wants to ease political anxieties about security in Iraq, but it has rejected calls for a dramatic policy shift.

Showing progress in Iraq is critical because the approaching elections are widely viewed as a referendum on the war.

US officials in Iraq said today that government leaders there have agreed to develop a timeline by the end of the year for progress in stabilising Iraq and reducing violence that has killed 300 Iraqi troops during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan alone.

Iraqi forces should be able to take full control of security in the country within the next 12 to 18 months with minimal American support, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said today.

Casey also said he felt the United States should continue to focus on reducing the number of American forces in the country, adding that he would not hesitate to ask for more troops if he felt they were necessary.

“We are about 75 per cent of the way through as three-step process in building those (Iraqi) forces. It is going to take another 12 to 18 months or so till I believe the Iraqi security forces are completely capable of taking over responsibility for their own security that’s still coupled with some level of support from us,” Casey said.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who opened the rare joint news conference with Casey, said the Iraqi government had agreed by the end of the year to develop a timeline for progress.

At the same time, he declared, the United States needed to redouble its efforts to succeed in Iraq.

Both men castigated Iran and Syria, Iraq’s neighbours east and west, for trying to undermine the American effort to stabilise the country.

Khalilzad said that radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who controls the violent Mahdi Army militia, had agreed to US demands that the government develop a timeline for reducing violence and stabilising the political situation in the country.