IRAQ:Dialogue with the resistance could be more fruitful than talks with Iran and Saudi Arabia, writes Michael Jansen
Weekend preparations for the coming summit in Amman between US President Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki have not proceeded as planned.
Although US vice-president Dick Cheney met Saudi royals in Riyadh to plead with them to rein in Iraqi Sunni insurgents and provide reconstruction funds for Iraq, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani could not travel to Tehran because of the curfew which closed down Baghdad and its airport for two days.
He is expected to make the journey today and to plead with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not to fight the US through Shia proxies in Iraq to exert pressure on Washington over its opposition to Iran's nuclear programme. Yesterday Mr Ahmadinejad offered to help the US in Iraq once its plans for withdrawal were clarified.
Analysts see both missions as pointless. The Saudis have little influence with the Iraqi resistance and no intention of providing funds for rebuilding until the country is stable. Iran is unlikely to agree to Washington's call to stop intervening in Iraq's affairs as long as the US is pressing the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on it.
The summit, tacked on to a presidential tour and scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, was originally meant to bolster Mr Maliki, castigated in Washington and Baghdad for being an ineffective leader. But it has become a crisis meeting for both leaders. Mr Bush is under growing pressure to come up with a new strategy in Iraq, reversing the stay-on- till-victory policy he has followed so far. Mr Maliki is caught between the US, which insists that he must rein in two Shia militias that are slaughtering Sunnis, and his coalition partners, to whom the militias belong. The largest faction in the coalition, led by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose al-Mahdi army militia is blamed for most of the killing, has threatened to suspend participation, bringing down the government, if Mr Maliki goes to Amman.
Iraq was plunged into crisis last Thursday when over 200 Shia civilians were slaughtered in Sadr City and the Sadrist-dominated health ministry was assaulted. This co-ordinated operation was almost certainly mounted by Sunni insurgents in retaliation for the kidnapping of 150 people at the Sunni-run higher education ministry.
Attacks by Shia militiamen on Sunnis began last February after al- Qaeda militants bombed a sacred Shia shrine in Samarra. But in recent weeks Sunni fundamentalist and secular resistance groups have responded to Shia attacks. This has produced a balance of terror in Iraq that could provide an opportunity for mediators if Mr Bush, Mr Maliki, and militants on both sides are prepared to accept the intervention of Iraq's neighbours and, perhaps, the UN. No one wants the multiple conflicts gripping Iraq to spill across the country's borders.
One opportunity to achieve a measure of reconciliation could be the repeatedly postponed Iraqi reconciliation conference, also set for this week. But this meeting is likely to be delayed once again due to the mass killings in Baghdad. Also there is no point in convening the gathering unless Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, including the resistance, are interested in reversing the rising violence of the last few months which culminated in the slaughter of 3,709 Iraqis during October, the highest monthly total so far. Unfortunately, the leaders of these warring communities have not demonstrated willingness to come together, tackle the killers, and form a real unity government with a programme for national survival.
While Iraqis in power remain wedded to their communal agendas, Mr Bush continues to be constrained by his own conservative policies. He refuses to engage Iran and Syria or to call upon the UN, regarded with suspicion by right-wing Republicans, to play an independent role in stabilising Iraq.
Finally, Mr Maliki and Mr Bush still insist that Sunni opponents are mainly "Saddamists" and taqfiris (extremist Sunnis who hate Shias) rather than nationalist groups seeking to oust foreign occupiers and their allies. But analysts argue that to end the insurgency, which cannot be defeated militarily, Mr Bush and Mr Maliki must engage those involved and come to terms with them as well as bring in the neighbours and the UN.