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Iraq leaders grasp need for speed: Cheney
By Olivier Knox
AFP
BAGHDAD
Petroleumworld.com 05 10 07US Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday he found Iraqi leaders more committed than before to national reconciliation, as a rocket attack rattled Baghdad's Green Zone and marred his surprise visit here.
"I do believe that there's a greater sense of urgency" among Iraqis, said the US vice president, who indicated nonetheless that he had received no specific target dates from his hosts for achieving particular goals.
US officials have expressed mounting exasperation at the slow pace of key legislation, including efforts to regulate oil revenues, set up regional elections and allow former members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party to hold government jobs.
"I did sense, today, a greater awareness on the part of the Iraqi officials I talked to of the importance of their working together to resolve these issues in a timely fashion," Cheney said as he opened a week-long Middle East tour.
Asked whether he had secured any specific commitments from Iraq's fragile government, Cheney said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would address some of those issues in a speech to parliament this week.
But he underlined that making progress by a pre-determined date was "difficult to do with our Congress let alone somebody else's" -- an oblique reference to fierce battles with Democrats eager to end US involvement in Iraq.
Cheney said that he had pressed Iraq's leaders to forgo plans for a two-month parliamentary summer recess, especially at a time when the White House's Democratic foes are trying to end US involvement in Iraq.
"I did make it clear that we believe it's very important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion, that any undue delay would be difficult to explain," he said.
But he declined to say whether the planned holiday was now a dead letter, saying: "I can't make that prediction. That's a sovereign issue."
Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed said after talks in Berlin with his German counterpart, Franz Josef Jung, that it was "impossible to take holiday given the current situation".
"The parliament should be there to serve the people," the minister said.
Asked whether Iraq's security situation had improved since he was last here in December 2005, Cheney said he had talked to Iraqi leaders and that "they believe the situation has gotten better".
"I have to rely on reports, just like everybody else, because obviously I spent today here basically in our embassy and military headquarters in the Green Zone so I can't speak from personal experience to what's going on all across Iraq," Cheney said.
Earlier, an explosion rattled the windows of the workspace of the reporters covering the vice president's visit, prompting US officials to lead them to a more secure area.
Cheney's movements during his visit were kept secret for security reasons, but the vice president openly acknowledged their limitations.
US officials hurriedly ushered reporters covering Cheney's trip to Iraq from their workspace after hearing a muffled boom that rattled the windows -- an eerie echo of a suicide bombing at Bagram air base in Afghanistan when he paid a surprise visit there in February.
But a spokeswoman for Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, said "his meeting was not disrupted and he was not moved."
While Cheney was in Iraq, his boss President George W. Bush was preparing to veto a second attempt by Democratic Congressmen to impose limitations on US action in Iraq through a bill authorising military funding.
Reacting to reports that the next version of the bill would limit the funding to three months, White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would block it, as he did a previous draft which sought to impose a withdrawal timetable.
Nevertheless, a majority of Americans back a timetable for pulling US troops out of Iraq and do not believe keeping forces in the country will prevent future terrorist attacks, a new poll found on Wednesday.
According to the USA Today/Gallup survey, 59 percent support setting a deadline for removing troops and only 22 percent accept Bush's argument that the military presence prevents new terrorist attacks on the United States.
AFP 091655 GMT 05 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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