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 Biden arrives in Iraq amid political impasse 7/3/2010 - 6:39:44 PM  US vice president Joe Biden landed today in Baghdad on what appeared to be a dual mission: to visit US troops during the Fourth of July weekend and coax Iraqi leaders into ending their government impasse. Top Obama administration officials have been reluctant to visit Iraq since its deadlocked March election failed to produce a clear winner. Mr Biden's trip may signal the US is stepping up its efforts to hammer out an agreement among Iraqi political rivals and get a new government in place as soon as possible. Mr Biden is the White House's point man on Iraq issues, and was last in Iraq in January. He visited three times last year. The vice president landed at an airforce base in Baghdad and was immediately scheduled to head to meetings with US ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, the top American military commander in Iraq, US Army General Ray Odierno, and the top UN envoy to Iraq, Ad Melkert. Mr Biden will "affirm the United States' long-term commitment to Iraq and discuss recent developments" with Iraqi officials, the White House said in a statement today. He is expected to meet with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, prime minister Nouri Maliki and the premier's main political rival, Ayad Allawi. High ranking US senators - Republicans John McCain from Arizona and Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, as well as Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut - also met Mr Biden at the Baghdad airport today. They are in Iraq on an unrelated trip and did not travel here with the vice president. Earlier today, Mr McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, met Mr Maliki in the Iraqi capital. Mr Biden's trip comes at a sensitive time for Iraq. The newly elected parliament is scheduled to meet later this month for the second time since the March 7 vote, but vying political factions remain deadlocked over which bloc has enough support to pick its new leaders, including prime minister. Parliament has only about a month to end the impasse before the start of Ramadan in August, when little official business gets done in the Arab world. Adding to the urgency, all but 50,000 US troops are set to leave Iraq by the end of August in a test of whether the fledgling democracy's security forces are ready to protect its people from insurgents and other terror threats. Persistent violence has raised fears that al Qaida in Iraq and other militants are trying to exploit the political deadlock to foment unrest and derail security gains as the American military prepares to withdraw all of its troops by the end of next year. Analysts and some Iraqi lawmakers have warned that the end to the political gridlock could still be months away. Some Iraqi political leaders, including foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, who greeted the vice president at the airport, have accused the US of being more focused on the withdrawal of American troops than on helping Iraq end its political impasse. There are currently about 77,500 US troops on the ground in Iraq. Mr Maliki, who leads a Shiite political coalition, is battling to keep his job after the Sunni-backed Iraqiya list narrowly won the most seats in the March 7 balloting. But Mr Maliki has tried to outmanoeuvre his challengers by creating a so-called super-Shiite alliance that would give him more seats in parliament than Iraqiya, which is led by his chief rival Mr Allawi. Iraqiya leaders have claimed they should have the first crack at forming the government because they won the most seats on election day. But a March court opinion opened the door to the possibility that the largest bloc could be one created after the election through negotiations - meaning that if the super-Shiite coalition holds together, it could have the right to form the government. |
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