In Iraq, Biden sees ‘new path’ after U.S. pullout

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

In Iraq, Biden sees ‘new path’ after U.S. pullout

With just a month to go to complete a full U.S. troop pullout from Iraq, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sat down with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Wednesday to help forge a new relationship between the two countries.

We are embarking on a new path together, a new phase in this relationship,” Mr. Biden said at the beginning of the talks.

Mr. Biden made an unannounced visit to Baghdad late Tuesday to mark the end of the Iraq war, which began with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein and stretched on for more than eight years as factions rose up to fight the U.S. presence and clashed with one another as they vied for control of regions of the country.

As streams of convoys and transport aircraft carried troops out of the country, Mr. Biden told Mr. Maliki that a complete U.S. troop withdrawal is in the best interest of the United States and Iraq and marks the beginning of their relationship as “two sovereign nations.”

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Mr. Biden acknowledged the turmoil Iraq has suffered over the past decade — “from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein” and by being “victimized by terror” in the years after the dictator’s fall. He thanked the Iraqi people for their resilience and resolve, calling them the country’s best “natural resource.”

“Few nations have gone through what you’ve gone through,” Mr. Biden said, “but now Iraq is poised to join the community of nations who are the great contributors to the world.”

Iraq is a “great example” of a nation that has worked its way through travails and is expressing the people’s will, Mr. Biden continued.

The exact level of ongoing U.S. military assistance is expected to be a major focus of the talks. On Oct. 21, President Obama and Mr. Maliki agreed to a drawdown of U.S. forces by the end of 2011 after the two governments could not agree on extending a “status of forces” pact for U.S. troops serving there. Some U.S. military advisers had recommended keeping several thousand American troops in Iraq into 2012, in part as a precaution against incursions from Iran.

Mr. Biden said the two allies would cooperate on security issues such as training, intelligence and counter-terrorism and set up a committee for coordinating security and defense cooperation.

The State Department will maintain a strong presence in Iraq, including an estimated 4,500 private security contractors there to protect U.S. civilian workers at the embassy and elsewhere. Already, Mr. Biden said, the U.S. has completed nearly 1,800 projects in Iraq’s health sector, valued at $800 million, including the renovation of 122 primary health centers. The U.S. also has invested in transportation infrastructure, an air traffic control network and railroads.

The U.S. civilian presence is big, Mr. Biden acknowledged, but “is sized to meet the request and the obligations and promises we’ve made.”

“If we’re going to get this job done together, we need to have people on the spot, on the job, in place, immediately accessible,” he said.

Mr. Maliki echoed many of Mr. Biden’s statements about the new phase of the U.S.-Iraqi relationship, stressing that the ties between the two countries would be based on “mutual respect.”

Iraq is now capable of protecting its internal security, Mr. Maliki said, noting that the U.S. military would continue to have a role in providing training for Iraqi forces.

Mr. Maliki also said he hoped U.S. companies would come to Iraq with the same force as U.S. troops did in 2003.

“Yes, we will face some difficulties,” he said, but as long as the U.S. and Iraq agree on a “robust partnership,” the two sides would find many mutual areas of cooperation.

The visit is Mr. Biden’s eighth to Iraq since talking office in 2009. Later Wednesday, Mr. Biden planned to attend a ceremony commemorating the sacrifices of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the eight-year-long conflict. Violence in Iraq is down since the peak of insurgency in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common.

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