Baker-Hamilton report receives cold response in Iraq, Mideast

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report has received a chilly response in the Middle East since its Dec. 6 release, most notably from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Talabani said that the key suggestions of the report of the ISG, chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, were "the wrong medicine for the wrong diagnosis" and called them an unwarranted interference in Iraq's internal affairs that undermined the war-torn country's sovereignty at a crucial time. "We can smell the attitude of James Baker in 1991 when he liberated Kuwait but left Saddam in power," he said. "If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on. We are a sovereign country." The Iraqi president said he would send a letter to President Bush outlining the government's thinking about "the main issues" contained in the Baker-Hamilton document. The former Kurdish guerrilla leader said he was particularly alarmed by the recommendations for Iraq's security structures, including the fledgling Iraqi army and the police. The ISG suggested withdrawing US troops from a frontline combat role by 2008, and increasing the number of US soldiers embedded with the Iraqi army from 3,000-4,000 currently to 10,000-20,000. A clearly agitated Talabani said: "They want to embed thousands more US army officers in Iraqi army units from small squadrons to whole divisions. If our army became a tool in the hands of foreign officers, what would that say about Iraqi sovereignty?" The findings of the Iraq Study Group have already met considerable vocal opposition in Iraq, but Talabani's comments are the loudest so far. The head of the Kurdistan Alliance, Talabani is one of the country's most influential figures, a broker among the feuding factions in Baghdad. A western diplomat in Baghdad said: "To hear such comments from anti-US figures like Moqtada al-Sadr is one thing, but to hear it from President Talabani is something else." The response from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, has been somewhat muted. Shortly before the report's release, he dropped his earlier opposition to the involvement of neighboring countries in Iraq's security and called for an international conference to address the matter, which fell in line with one of the primary goals in the Baker-Hamilton report. Other Iraqis expressed fear that the report's recommendations could weaken an already besieged government. "It is a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq's problems," said Ayad al-Sammarai, an influential Sunni Muslim politician. Sammarai said the Bush administration has a responsibility to fulfill its pledge to bring democracy to Iraq, in which minorities will have a voice. "Because of their mistakes, it is so complicated now," he said. "Now, they say, 'We're going to leave the Iraqis to solve their problems.'" The ISG recommends withdrawing US support if the Iraqis fail to show advances. "If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government," the report's executive summary says. For some Iraqis, the statement suggested that the report's authors did not grasp, or refused to acknowledge, the diverse ambitions, rivalries and weaknesses that plague the government. The Kurds have dreams of creating an independent state. The Sunnis appear leaderless, yet seek a political voice. The Shiites are riven by feuds. The report calls on the Iraqi government to disband militias and purge the security forces of sectarian elements. Maliki, who controls no militia of his own, depends on Moqtada al-Sadr for political support, making it politically suicidal for him to attempt to dismantle Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, the largest militia in Iraq. The ISG's call for a wider Middle East peace initiative and negotiations with Iran and Syria drew a mixed response in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected opening peace talks with Syria to ease tensions in the Middle East–a key recommendation of the report. Olmert said he had no intention of talking to the Syrians. He did not comment on a further ISG recommendation that Israel hand back the occupied Golan Heights to its northern neighbor. "The attempt to create a linkage between the Iraqi issue and the Mideast issue–we have a different view," Olmert told Israeli journalists. Iran's foreign minister said his country would enter discussions on stabilizing Iraq only if the United States commits to a troop withdrawal. Speaking to a security conference in Bahrain, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was open to dialogue as long as the United States "changes its attitude," and he asserted that the US was "50 percent to blame" for Iraq's violence. When asked whether Iran would join a diplomatic effort to stabilize Iraq as the Baker-Hamilton report suggested, Mottaki signaled that his nation would only do so as part of an arrangement in which the United States began to withdraw its forces. "The United States should help itself before anyone else," he told reporters after his presentation. "The first step is they have to say that they will be ready to leave Iraq."