Bush to meet Iraqi PM to discuss security crisis

[struggle4progress]

Jonathan Steele in Irbil
Thursday November 23, 2006
The Guardian

... The scale of Iraq's crisis was highlighted yesterday when the UN mission in Iraq announced its latest bimonthly survey of human rights. Some 7,054 civilians died in September and October from bombings and assassinations, around 450 more than in July and August. The death toll for October made it the worst single month since the US-led invasion in March 2003 ...

Last month Mr Maliki challenged statements by Zalmay Khalil-zad, the US ambassador, that the two governments were in agreement on a transfer of security tasks. Mr Bush will fly to Jordan next Wednesday.

White House officials told reporters yesterday that the Amman stopover had been under discussion for more than a week, but observers speculated that it had partly been prompted by Iran's invitation to the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, to visit Tehran this weekend for talks on Iraq.

The initiative seemed to upstage Washington, which has no face-to-face contacts with Iran, giving the impression that the US was being sidelined even by its allies in Baghdad. The Bush-Maliki talks will allow the US president to counter that view ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1954820,00.html

[MidwestTransplant]

1. Crisis? What crisis? Stupid librul media bias