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VP Biden visits Iraq on new US pullout role
2009-07-02
BAGHDAD (AFP) - US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on Thursday on a surprise trip just two days after a long-planned pullback of American forces from the conflict-hit nation's towns and cities. Biden was greeted at Baghdad airport by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who did not say how long the visit would last but said talks with political leaders would follow shortly. "This visit comes at a very important time after the withdrawal of US forces," Zebari told AFP. "It is a very important visit and Mr Biden will hold meetings with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other senior leaders." Biden's trip came just after President Barack Obama asked his vice president to take on a new role overseeing the US departure from Iraq and Washington's effort to promote internal political reconciliation in Baghdad. "Vice President Biden has arrived in Iraq to visit US troops and to meet with Iraqi leaders, including President Jalal Talabani," Maliki and parliament speaker Ayad al-Samarrai, the White House said. It added that in his talks with Iraqi leaders Biden would renew the US commitment to complete the terms of the US-Iraqi accord governing the future role of US forces in Iraq and continue the drawdown of US troops. At the time of the pullback, Obama, who opposed the 2003 invasion ordered by his predecessor George W. Bush, hailed the US pullback as an "important milestone" but warned of difficult days of bloodshed and violence ahead. It is Biden's first trip to Iraq since he was sworn in as vice president in January, but he previously made repeated trips to the country when he was chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee. The White House said Tuesday that Biden would work closely with General Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, and the US ambassador to Baghdad, Christopher Hill, as US forces prepare to exit completely by the end of 2011. "The vice president has been asked by the president to oversee the policy," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, speaking on the day that US troops withdrew from Iraqi urban centres under last November's accord with Baghdad. Biden would work with Iraqis "toward overcoming their political differences and achieving the type of reconciliation that we all understand has yet to fully take place but needs to take place," he said. "Given his knowledge of the region, the number of times he's been there, he's perfectly suited for this type of role." But Gibbs said an idea once put forward by Biden, of dividing Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities into a federation of autonomous zones, was not on the table for the Obama administration. Iraq marked the American pullback on Tuesday with a national holiday, six years after the invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein but sparked an insurgency and sectarian bloodshed that has left tens of thousands dead. Iraq's 500,000 police and 250,000 soldiers are now in charge in cities, towns and villages, while most of the 133,000 US troops remaining in the country will be based outside towns and cities. The Americans will largely play a training and support role. Maliki on Tuesday took on critics of Iraq's security forces, insisting they were up to the task of taking over from US forces. "It is an offence to the Iraqis. The people who said that the foreign troops would never withdraw and would keep permanent bases in our country were giving a green light to the terrorists to kill civilians," he said. Under the Status of Forces Agreement signed in November, US commanders must now seek Iraqi permission to conduct operations, but their troops retain a unilateral right to "legitimate self-defence."
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