US lawmakers slam Iraqi PM, urge drawdown of US troops

UNITED STATES: Top US lawmakers from across the political divide on Sunday expressed impatience with Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki and called for a withdrawal of US troops to begin.

Republican John Warner, one of the Senate's most influential voices on military affairs, amplified his bombshell demand of last week that President George W. Bush should start a limited troop withdrawal from Iraq by Christmas.

"Our troops have performed magnificently, under brilliant leadership, and have done precisely as the president asked," he told NBC television.

"But the government, under the leadership of Maliki and other Iraqi leaders, have totally failed to put the other part of that partnership in place, namely deliver greater security."

Bush last Wednesday defended Iraq's beleaguered prime minister as "a good man with a difficult job," seeking to dispel any sense that Washington is distancing itself from the government in Baghdad.

But Democrats on Sunday slammed Maliki's government as a failure and said the current US troop "surge" could not halt sectarian turmoil.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said the "Maliki government is falling apart" with no discernible progress on security and the sectarian rift.

"You've got Maliki flirting with Iran right now. I mean, is this guy our ally?" he said. Democratic Senator Jack Reed also expressed disappointment with the Baghdad government but said Iraq's unrest could not be pinned on a single person after Maliki lashed out at US politicians urging him to go and demanded France apologize for pushing for his departure.

"The notion that if Maliki goes and everything will be fine I think misses the point that the institutional capacity in Iraq, the ability to do simple things - make contracts, provide simple services to people - that's not present after four years," Reed told Fox News on Sunday.

The dissident views now being expressed by prominent Republican figures like Warner have piled pressure on the Bush administration for a change of course in Iraq as the mid-September report looms.

Washington, Monday, AFP.