WASHINGTON - Despite a growing and
virtually universal consensus both in the US and
abroad that the United States must engage Syria
and Iran if it hopes to stabilize Iraq, US
President George W Bush appears determined to
ignore Baghdad's two key neighbors as long as
possible.
That is increasingly the
assessment of analysts who had been hopeful that
the Democratic sweep of the mid-term congressional
elections in November, as
well as Bush's decision to replace Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld with former Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) director Robert Gates, would incline
the president toward a more accommodating stance.
In particular, it had been thought that
those two developments would make the anticipated
recommendation by the congressionally mandated,
bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) co-chaired by
former secretary of state James Baker - that
Washington actively promote and participate in
regional negotiations on Iraq that would include
Iran and Syria - politically irresistible. Its
long-awaited report will be released next week.
But recent statements by Bush and other
senior administration officials, as well as the
departure of a key "realist" adviser to Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, have fueled growing
speculation that Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney hope they can still prevail in Iraq without
having to sit down with the two "evil-doers".
Indeed, that appeared to be the message
Bush wished to convey on Tuesday at a North
Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Riga where
he recommitted the US to support for Iraq's "young
democracy" and vowed not to withdraw US troops
"until the mission is complete".
"He has
no intention to change his policy in Iraq," Pat
Lang, a former top Middle East analyst at the
Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, concluded
after reviewing Bush's remarks.
In the
same appearance, Bush also seemed to rule out
talks with Tehran and Damascus under present
circumstances. "Iran knows how to get to the table
with us. That is to verifiably suspend their
[uranium] enrichment programs," he said,
stressing, however, that he had no objection to
direct talks between the Iraqi leaders, such as
those carried out over the weekend in Tehran by
President Jalal Talabani, and their counterparts
in Iran and Syria.
The New York Times
described Bush's comments as "laying the
foundation to push back against" the ISG's
anticipated recommendations, an assessment that
echoes recent suggestions by senior officials,
including Bush, that the ISG is just one of a
number of ongoing reviews of the situation in Iraq
that the administration will consider in the
coming weeks.
The 10-member ISG, which
began its work last spring and has been meeting to
reach its final conclusions behind closed doors in
Washington this week, is co-chaired by Baker and
Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic chairman of the
House of Representatives Foreign Affairs
Committee.
Its mainly centrist membership
is reportedly divided, largely along partisan
lines, on a series of options regarding strategy
in Iraq, ranging from a gradual drawdown of the
150,000 US troops to a short-term "surge" of
additional forces to pacify Baghdad followed by
greatly intensified efforts at training Iraqi
forces.
But leaks from the group suggest
that the members are approaching consensus that
the situation in Iraq and US influence there have
deteriorated to such an extent that Bush's
definition of "victory" - creating a functioning
democratic state - is at this point beyond
Washington's capacity to achieve and that the best
that can be hoped for is to stabilize the country
with the help of its neighbors.
To that
end, the group has reportedly reached agreement on
the necessity of convening a regional forum, much
as was done for Afghanistan after the Taliban's
ouster there in 2001. Such a forum, in the group's
view, would have to include both Syria and Iran;
the latter is believed to enjoy considerable
influence with the majority Shi'ite parties and
their militias.
According to some reports,
the group may go yet further by calling for such a
forum - not unlike the 1991 Madrid Conference that
Baker convened after the first Gulf War in 1991 -
to include Israel as part of a regional security
initiative designed not only to address Iraq, but
also to help midwife a viable Palestinian state,
as called for with growing urgency by Washington's
three closest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
Jordan.
While Gates, an ISG member until
his nomination to replace Rumsfeld, and Rice are
believed to support both ideas, they are strongly
opposed by both Cheney and the senior Middle East
director on the National Security Council, Elliot
Abrams. With Rumsfeld's departure, their offices
remain the last strongholds of neo-conservative
influence in the administration.
Their
pro-Likud supporters in think-tanks and the media,
notably
