Bush: 'We’re going to stay in Iraq'

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 30 — President Bush said today that American troops would stay in Iraq unless its government asks them to leave, using a joint news conference with the Iraqi prime minister to push back against a reported decision by an independent bipartisan panel to call for a gradual withdrawal.

“I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq,” Mr. Bush said during a joint news conference here with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, referring to the final report by the Iraq Study Group that is expected next week. “We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there.”

The president sought to play down tensions between him and Mr. Maliki, calling the prime minister “the right guy for Iraq.”

Mr. Bush also said he and Mr. Maliki would oppose any plan to partition the country, which is increasingly split by sectarian violence. The two appeared together after an hourlong breakfast meeting with aides at the Four Seasons Hotel here that was followed by a 45-minute one-on-one session.

“The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition in Iraq would only lead to an increase of sectarian violence,” Mr. Bush said, adding, “I agree.”

The two leaders set no timetable for speeding up the training of Iraqi forces, which Mr. Bush described as evolving “from ground zero,” and a senior administration official, who attended the breakfast and was granted anonymity to discuss it, said hurdles remain.

“This is not a simple process of passing the baton,” the official said, adding, “This is not the United States and Iraq struggling for control of the steering wheel. This is the United States wanting Iraq to be firmly with the steering wheel in its hand, and the issue is, how do we get there as quickly as possible.”

In Baghdad today, the pressures on Mr. Maliki continued to rise. An aide to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose followers have temporarily withdrawn from the government to protest Mr. Maliki’s meeting with Mr. Bush, announced an effort to form a political alliance across ethnic and religious lines to push for a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

Read the rest at the NY Times

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