Can Iraqi PM do his part? Doubts grow

WASHINGTON — President Bush and his aides say they are confident that putting more U.S. troops on the streets of Baghdad can help turn Iraq around.

What they don't know, officials add, is whether the Iraqi government will do its part.

Bush's new plan will be a test of Iraq's Shiite Muslim prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. If he fails, some officials suggest, the United States may look for a different leader as its partner in Iraq.

"There's a lot of skepticism ... about Prime Minister Maliki," a senior official said, speaking on condition he not be named.

"Is this a government that is really a unity government, or is it a government ... [with] a Shiite sectarian agenda? We need to clarify whether this government is really a partner or not."

For months, al-Maliki has told Bush and other U.S. officials what they wanted to hear: He would share political power with moderate Sunni Arabs and with his Shiite supporters; he would commit more Iraqi troops to the battle for Baghdad; he would crack down on militias, including those loyal to fiery Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose party is in his government.

In practice, however, al-Maliki has failed to deliver on most fronts, prompting Bush and his aides to debate, in private, whether al-Maliki was capable of stabilizing his fracturing country, even as the president in public has expressed confidence in him.

As a result, a large part of Bush's speech was devoted to publicly warning al-Maliki that this may be his last chance to succeed with U.S. support.

Officials declined to say what the administration will do if al-Maliki does not deliver this time, or if Iraqi security forces fall short in the field.

But one senior official suggested that if al-Maliki fails to stabilize Baghdad, the pressures of Iraq's newly democratic political system could cost him his job.

"If ... they disappoint the expectations of the Iraqi people and the American people, I think they're going to have to deal with the Iraqi people before they have to deal with the American people," he said.

Other officials have suggested that the United States could use its influence to force al-Maliki's government to fall, by holding up economic aid until a new leader was named, for example. But they emphasized that no decision has been made to follow that course.

One option Bush will not embrace, however, is an early U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, several officials said.

"Simply coming home isn't an option," said one, noting Bush's conviction that a withdrawal would turn Iraq into what he has called "a safe haven for terrorists."

The first clear test of al-Maliki's government, officials said, will come in little more than a month: The Iraq government has promised to commit three additional army brigades, about 7,500 troops, to Baghdad by Feb. 15. The next question will be how quickly and how well those troops go into battle, a senior official said.

Other benchmarks include sending troops to quell Shiite militias and Sunni forces, enacting a law to share oil revenue fairly among ethnic groups and other changes to make the government more evenhanded.

Experts on Iraq outside the government said they were skeptical about the new plan's chances for success, in part because the Iraqi government's performance has been so uneven.

"The plan sounds wonderful," said Kenneth Pollack, of the Brookings Institution. "But I'm wary about the extent to which they are going to dump the problems on the Iraqis. ... One of the greatest mistakes we've made in the past three years has been insisting that the Iraqis have to do the heavy lifting when they weren't capable of it."

Phebe Marr, author of "The Modern History of Iraq," said, "The weakness of Iraq is that it doesn't have a government such as you and I understand the word. ...

"Even if Maliki has the intention to carry these things out, what has he got to work with? It's not a question of personality. He doesn't have the power base, the institutions, the wherewithal to do it."