Bush blames Al Qaeda

[Lanya]

Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Wave of Iraq Violence

    By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JOHN O’NEIL
Published: November 28, 2006

TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today said Al Qaeda was to blame for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, which he refused to label a civil war. Mr. Bush said he would press Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during meetings in Jordan later this week to lay out a strategy for restoring order.


President Bush held a news conference today with President Toomas Hendrik in Tallinn, Estonia.

“My questions to him will be: What do we need to do to succeed? What is your strategy in dealing with the sectarian violence?” said Mr. Bush. “I will assure him that we will continue to pursue Al Qaeda to make sure that they do not establish a safe haven in Iraq.”

The remarks, made at a press conference here with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, were Mr. Bush’s first on the situation in Iraq since a series of bombs exploded in a Shiite district of Baghdad last Thursday, killing more than 200 people. The bombing was the deadliest single attack since the American invasion.

The following day, Shiite militiamen staged a vengeful reprisal, attacking Sunni mosques in Baghdad and in the nearby city of Baquba.

The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan’s King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the country is at the brink of civil war.

But Mr. Bush, who heads to Jordan on Wednesday for two days of meetings with Mr. Maliki, dismissed a question about whether a civil war has indeed erupted.

“There’s all kinds of speculation about what may or may not be happening,” he said, adding, “No question about it, it’s tough.”

Mr. Bush also had harsh words for Syria and Iran, and reiterated his stance that he does not intend to negotiate directly with them to enlist their help in ending the violence in Iraq. He said he would leave such talks to the government of Iraq, “a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy.”

The president acknowledged that there were high levels of sectarian violence in Iraq, but he put the blame for the disorder squarely on Al Qaeda.

“There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of the attacks by Al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal,” Mr. Bush said, adding that he planned to work with Mr. Maliki “to defeat these elements.”

Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, “The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks are at odds with statements made in recent weeks both by American military commanders and by Mr. Maliki.

While American military and intelligence officials credit Al Qaeda’s attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February with having sparked waves of sectarian violence, more recently the officials have consistently described a more complicated picture. Earlier this month, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples of the Defense Intelligence Agency characterized the situation before Congress as an “ongoing, violent struggle for power.”

That assessment was more in line with Mr. Maliki’s declaration after the recent bombings that such attacks are “the reflection of political backgrounds” and that “the crisis is political.”

In a televised briefing in Baghdad today, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq said that the already high levels of violence in the capital were likely to increase in the coming weeks in reaction to last week’s bombings.

In addition, the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said that mortar and rocket attacks between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods were on the rise. A mortar attack followed the bombings last Thursday, and had been part of an attack earlier that day on the Health Ministry, which is controlled by Shiite parties. Shiite militias responded with their own mortar attacks, he said.

General Caldwell described Al Qaeda as having been “severely disorganized” by American and Iraqi efforts this year, but said it is still “the most well-funded of any group and can produce the most sensational attacks of any element out there.”

He summarized the continuing violence in Baghdad this way: Shiite militias conducting murders and assassinations in the city’s Sunni western section, and Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda staging “high visibility casualty events” in the city’s predominantly Shiite east.

General Caldwell declined to say that the country was engulfed in a civil war, saying that Iraq’s government continues to function and that the conflict did not involve “another viable entity that’s vying to take control.”

The question of whether the fighting constitutes a civil war has becoming an increasingly sensitive one for the Bush administration, as Democrats cite agreement among a wide range of academic and military experts that the conflict meets most standard definitions of the term.

General Caldwell conceded that struggles for political and economic power were taking place on many levels throughout the country, including fights among Shiite groups seeking dominance in the south and among Sunni elements in Iraq’s west.

“The political parties need to start reining in their extremist elements,” he said.

At the same briefing, a spokesman for the Air Force said that the body of the pilot of an F-16 jet fighter that crashed northwest of Baghdad had not been found at the crash site. The spokesman said that it could not be determined from the position of the ejection seat whether the pilot had been able to get out before the crash, and said that DNA tests were being conducted on blood found at the scene.

Mr. Bush’s agenda today and tomorrow is supposed to focus on the spread of democracy in the Baltic nations and on Afghanistan, which will top the agenda at a N.A.T.O. summit in Riga, Latvia, where he arrived after his visit to Tallinn — the first trip to Estonia ever by a sitting United States president.

The alliance has committed 32,000 troops to Afghanistan, but many nations have imposed restrictions on the activities and deployment of their troops that N.A.T.O. commanders say are hampering the mission. Mr. Bush is expected to press for the lifting of those restrictions.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Estonia and John O’Neil reported from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1164776400&en=b1465d36fd484434&ei=5094&partner=homepage