Bush, Maliki to meet next week in Jordan

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan next week amid rising sectarian violence in Iraq and after Iran-Iraq summit in Tehran.

The meeting will come on the heels of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's visit to Tehran this weekend for a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraq and Syria restored diplomatic relations after a 24-year rift, a move Iraq hopes can help stem what it says is Syrian support for militants and encourage other Arab states to rally to its aid.

The U.S. president will fly to Amman after the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, for talks on November 29-30 with the Iraqi leader to focus on "building security and stability in Iraq," said White House spokesman Tony Snow on Tuesday.

"We will focus our discussions on current developments in Iraq, progress made to date in the deliberations of a high level joint committee on transferring security responsibility and the role of the region in supporting Iraq," Snow said, reading from a joint U.S.-Iraqi statement as Bush flew back to Washington from a trip to Asia.

The chaos in Iraq has put mounting pressure on both Bush and Maliki to try to find a way to stem the violence. U.S. discontent over the handling of the Iraq war was a major reason voters ousted Bush's Republicans from power in Congress in the November 7 elections.

Allies have been urging Bush to talk about Iraq to his adversaries Iran and Syria, but Washington has so far reacted warily to that idea. White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said on Tuesday the administration had no objection to warmer relations among Iraq, Syria and Iran.

Washington and Iraqi leaders accuse Iran of backing militants pushing Iraq into all-out civil war.

Next month Bush is expected to receive recommendations on Iraq from a bipartisan Iraq Study Group. The Pentagon is conducting its own review of the approach on Iraq.

Hadley said Bush will want to hear from Maliki, "who's obviously been developing his own ideas on the way forward."

Read the rest at the Washington Post

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