BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri Maliki will push for the U.S. military to relinquish control over his nation's security forces when he meets President Bush today to discuss a strategy to quell raging violence in Iraq, aides and political insiders said Tuesday.
Frustrated by U.S. accusations that he isn't doing enough, Maliki says his hands are tied as long as he does not have the authority to deploy forces as he sees fit. He wants Bush to accelerate the training of the army and police, fund more recruits and provide them with bigger and better weapons, lawmakers briefed by Maliki said.
The prime minister also will insist at the two-day summit in Jordan that his government should drive negotiations with Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria, they said.
Maliki's emboldened stand comes at a time of uncertainty for U.S. strategy in Iraq. Bush is under pressure to make changes after Democrats swept the midterm congressional election on a wave of unhappiness about the war's results.
Bush is waiting for recommendations from a bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), which Tuesday continued work on its final report.
Democrats want Bush to set a timeline to start reducing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq. But Bush maintained Tuesday that there was no possibility of an immediate pullout.
"There's one thing I'm not going to do," he said during an afternoon speech in Riga, Latvia, where he was attending a NATO summit. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is completed."
Bush is also under pressure to enlist the help of Iran and Syria in curbing the bloodshed. But he ruled out direct negotiation with Iran unless it halts a uranium enrichment program that potentially could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
While the United States considers its options, Maliki's government has opened direct talks with both countries.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was in Tehran on Tuesday, securing promises of assistance from his counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He also has accepted an invitation to visit Syria, said his spokesman, Hiwa Osman, reached by telephone in Tehran.
The comments came on the eve of a hastily arranged summit in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where King Abdullah II will hold talks with Bush and Maliki after a week of some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq's civil war.
