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Bush Urges Shiite Leader to Support Premier - New York Times




Bush Urges Shiite Leader to Support Premier - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 — President Bush met Monday with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of the most powerful Shiite leaders in Iraq, and urged him to “reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy.”

The meeting with Mr. Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was part of an effort by the White House to shore up the fragile government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki by reaching out to a wider circle of Iraqi politicians.

The hourlong session in the Oval Office plunged Mr. Bush deep into the intricate web of Iraqi politics. Mr. Hakim is a fierce rival of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric who has thrown his weight behind Mr. Maliki and whose militia is widening the country’s sectarian divide through the killings of Sunni Arabs.

The White House wants Mr. Maliki to lessen his dependence on Mr. Sadr; one way to advance that cause would be to bolster Mr. Hakim’s ties with Mr. Maliki. Mr. Hakim is also a political rival of Mr. Maliki’s.

[...]

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, outlined the strategy of trying to meet with Iraqi politicians to gather support for the Iraqi government in a classified memo shown to and published by The New York Times last week. “Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) to support Maliki,” Mr. Hadley wrote in a section outlining how the White House might drive a wedge between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr.

By meeting with leaders other than Mr. Maliki, Mr. Bush runs the risk of undermining the Iraqi prime minister — whom he declared “the right guy for Iraq” during their meeting in Amman — by seeming to hedge his bets with others who might claim power should the Maliki government fail.

In an interview with Brit Hume of Fox News, Mr. Bush said he raised the issue with Mr. Hakim. “I said, ‘I just want you to understand, as you know, I met with the prime minister, the head of the government,’ ” Mr. Bush said. “And that I don’t want the prime minister to construe that this meeting in any way doesn’t support him and he said, ‘Look, I understand that as well.’ ”

Mr. Hakim’s close ties to Iran also pose potential problems for the Bush administration. His party, usually referred to by its acronym, Sciri, was founded in Iran and its armed wing, the Badr Organization, was widely accused by Sunni Arabs of operating death squads in the aftermath of the American invasion.

Mr. Hakim fended off the charges on Monday in an appearance at the United States Institute for Peace after his White House visit. “We reject all those accusations,” Mr. Hakim said when asked by a reporter if his organization was responsible for murder, torture and abduction. He added: “We say there is no evidence. Nothing of that happened.”
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