JORDAN:President George Bush sought to patch up relations with Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, at a brief summit in Amman yesterday, describing him as the "right guy for Iraq and we're going to help him".
At the same time, Mr Bush dismissed the leaked conclusion of a bipartisan commission in Washington that he should begin a gradual but significant withdrawal of combat troops.
He rejected any notion of a "graceful exit" as unrealistic: "It's in our interests to help liberty prevail in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. And that's why this business about graceful exit simply has no realism to it at all."
The president was reacting to press leaks from the Iraq Study Group (ISG), which is due to deliver a report on Wednesday after eight months of consultations with American officials, foreign leaders and senior officers.
The ISG will call for a radical reduction in combat troops, halving the US military presence to 70,000, which would be focused on support and training for Iraqi forces rather than fighting.
However, there is no fixed timetable attached to the proposal.
The Iraqi leader had refused to meet Mr Bush on Wednesday evening, making yesterday's talks over breakfast their only encounter. He was apparently angered by a leaked memo from Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser, to Mr Bush which questioned Mr Maliki's leadership.
Repairing the damage, Mr Bush praised Mr Maliki's "courage". He confided that the prime minister had told him his house in the heavily fortified Green Zone "gets shelled". "No question it's a violent society right now. He knows that better than anybody," Mr Bush said.
In a gesture to Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who remain suspicious of Mr Maliki's Shia-led government, Mr Bush came out firmly against partitioning Iraq into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions - which would leave the Sunnis with no access to Iraq's oil.
"[It] is not what the Iraqi people want . . . any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," he said.
An Iraqi official who attended the talks said Mr Maliki presented a plan for the training of Iraqi security forces. But the official declined to give details.
Mr Maliki warned his Shia colleagues not to pursue sectarian interests. He addressed his former ally, Moqtada al-Sadr, whose ministers and MPs announced their temporary withdrawal from government and parliament last week in protest at the meeting with Mr Bush. Mr Sadr's militia is also accused of sectarian abductions and murders in Baghdad's Sunni districts. "Those who participate in this government need to bear responsibilities . . . the protection of this government, the protection of the constitution, the protection of the law, not breaking the law," Mr Maliki said.
TheWhite House has also commissioned reports from the Pentagon and its own national security council, to allow it to pick and choose from different options. The joint chiefs of staff are reportedly considering a proposal that would involve a short-term increase in forces.
After the meeting, a senior US official said both leaders shared the aim of accelerating the transfer of control over Iraqi forces to Mr Maliki's government.
"One of the things his authority is looking at is speeding up that transfer of command and control of the 10 Iraqi divisions."
Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now a military strategist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, issued a pessimistic report on Iraq's prospects yesterday.
He said the tally of combat-ready Iraqi troops had been exaggerated by the Bush administration.
"Out of the more than 100 units, probably 20 to 30 perform a useful function," he said.