A scramble for answers in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq — While the United States awaited today's release of a report calling for new approaches to the Iraq war, Iraqi leaders were pressing ahead with their own initiatives.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reaffirmed Tuesday his intention to work with Iran and Syria to stem support for Shiite militias and Sunni Arab insurgents, an idea likely to be part of the recommendations from the panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

Few Iraqi politicians have put much stock in the deliberations of the U.S. commission or other reviews taking place in the United States. Some say they will reject any U.S. proposals on principle.

"We are now under occupation; whatever the occupation produces is considered illegitimate," said Fattah Sheik, an ally of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's.

Al-Maliki's decision Tuesday to send envoys to Iraq's neighbors to pave the way for a regional conference has the potential to polarize the debate further.

Al-Maliki, a Shiite, said his envoys would talk with other governments in the region, most of them Sunni-dominated, about how they might help establish security and stability in Iraq.

In recent days, President Jalal Talabani and a leading Shiite politician, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, have rejected U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposal for a regional peace conference. Annan said such a gathering could be useful if the parties met outside Iraq.

Al-Maliki, though, said any conference should take place in Iraq. Any proposals to emerge, he added, should conform to "what the national unity government wants."

While al-Maliki's Shiite-led government courts Iran and Syria, representatives of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam Hussein, have been making overtures to Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

Kurdish leaders worry such moves will lead to more foreign interference and prefer to look for solutions at home.

Al-Maliki has made reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs a central tenet of his administration. But he has never specified with whom he plans to negotiate. Not anyone who has killed Iraqis, his government has said, and not anyone who has killed Americans.

Frustrated by accusations he isn't doing enough to quell the country's violence, al-Maliki has been pressing in recent weeks for a speedy handover of security control from U.S. forces.

"Our hands are in cuffs," said Rida Jawad Taqi, a politician with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite rival to al-Sadr's movement. "We can't do anything unless we have the permission" of the U.S.-led forces.

Al-Maliki claims, if given a free hand, he could rein in the violence in six months.

Other factions disagree about the capabilities of Iraqi security forces and their allegiance to the government. Shiite militiamen and Sunni insurgents have infiltrated Iraq's army and police, using them as cover to hunt and kill rivals.

Deep differences divide even al-Maliki's governing coalition. Iraq's two largest Shiite factions, each backed by a private army implicated in the bloodshed, disagree on a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals.

Al-Sadr's representatives want U.S. forces to go home immediately.

"Four years after the Americans occupied Iraq, there is no excuse to stay here," said Nassar Rubaie, the leader of al-Sadr's legislative representatives. "If the Americans leave Iraq today, Iraq will be secure tomorrow."

However, most other Shiites concede Iraq's forces need U.S. backup and agree with those in the United States demanding a phased withdrawal.

"We need the United States to be with the Iraqi government as a partner, not a commander," Taqi said.

Shiites also are divided on proposals to split Iraq into semiautonomous regions based on sect and ethnicity.

Such divergent stances on solutions to the war, coupled with an embryonic Iraqi government that has so far failed to provide basic services or even to stage parliamentary meetings on a regular basis, threaten to derail any new initiatives, whether they come from Washington or Baghdad.

Sunni Arab politician Iyad Samaraie said the government suffered from two major deficiencies: the inability to reach consensus decisions and the inability to carry out policies.

Al-Maliki's plan to replace ineffective Cabinet members with technocrats has broad support, in principle, among the politicians barricaded inside Baghdad's Green Zone. But, so far, negotiations have featured the same jostling for influence that paralyzed previous attempts at change.

"You have this government hidden in the Green Zone, protected by Americans and isolated from people, and the streets are left to the terrorists," Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman said. "The citizens don't feel they have a government there to protect them."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.