Maliki and Bush to push 'civil peace' in Iraq by Olivier Knox
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were to meet Tuesday to discuss overhauling security in the war-torn country after the failure of a crackdown in Baghdad.
On the eve of their talks at the White House, US officers unveiled plans to beef up the US military presence in the Iraqi capital in the wake of what one senior Bush adviser called Maliki's "disappointing" security thrust there.
That six-week-old clampdown has failed to quell bloody sectarian violence, but Maliki used a stop in London to defend his record and promise that US-led forces would be needed in Iraq "definitely not decades, not even years."
"I think in this visit we will discuss issues that will enable foreign troops to leave," he told BBC Radio before meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday.
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