http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980927,00.html

All eyes on January 10 date for new course in Iraq
· Disillusion with Shia dominated government

Ewen MacAskill and Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian
As George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a US president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy.


The first, the hanging of Saddam Hussein, found Mr Bush asleep, and according to advisers he spent only a short time discussing the execution. The second, the reports of the 3,000th US fatality in Iraq, evinced a only general remark.

"The most painful aspect of the presidency is the fact that I know my decisions have caused young men and women to lose their lives," Mr Bush said at an end-of-year press conference in Texas. A White House spokesman added simply that the president "will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain".

The 3,000 figure was arrived at by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an internet-based monitoring group, and by the Associated Press, which keeps its own tally of US military deaths. The Pentagon disputed the figures, saying that the total of confirmed dead was 2,983. Nonetheless, the widespread reporting of the grim milestone appeared set to offset whatever boost Mr Bush will get from the news about Saddam's death.

The White House is due to announce a new course for Baghdad on January 10. Time is running out for the US and British governments. The insurgents and those engaged in the sectarian killing can afford to wait. But domestic political pressures put a question mark over American staying power.

As a former Texas governor who signed a near-record number of death warrants, Mr Bush will have had few qualms about the execution. There was also a personal element: he blamed Saddam for an assassination attempt on his father during a visit to Kuwait in 1993.

But far from marking the closure of an era in Iraq, Saddam's execution will exacerbate sectarian tensions. The fears of the minority Sunni Muslims will have been increased by the comments of his Shia executioners in support of the Shia militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr.

Mr Bush acknowledged the scale of the Iraq crisis on Saturday in a short statement on Saddam's death. Abandoning the gung-ho approach of past years, he cautioned that Saddam's demise would not halt the violence. "Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead," he said.

A US adviser involved in the talks on a new strategy said: "There is recognition that the present strategy is not working. But alternative options are limited." The source said there was a general disillusionment in the US administration with the Shia Muslim-dominated government led by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, which is increasingly viewed as condoning - or at least failing to act against - sectarian killing. "It would have been easier to implement a new strategy in 2005. It gets harder every day. We have painted ourselves into a corner with this [Iraqi] government," the source said.

The debate within the administration about what to do next is still to be resolved. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, is leading those in favour of the "surge" approach: sending a further 20,000-40,000 US troops to Baghdad to reinforce the present US force of 140,000 in a final attempt to subdue the Iraqi capital.

But the White House was given several warnings yesterday from figures across the political spectrum that any change of course in Iraq should be conducted in consultation with the new Congress. Richard Lugar, the outgoing Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, told Fox News that should the administration proceed with any move to increase troop numbers without involving Congress, Mr Bush could anticipate "a lot of hearings, a lot of study, a lot of criticism".

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter argued that only a surge in troop numbers, of 300,000-400,000 would make a difference. Speaking on CNN, Mr Brzezinski criticised the core group gathered around Mr Bush to determine Iraq policy. With the exception of the new defence secretary, Robert Gates, he noted "a narrow decision-making group embedded in its own opinions ... is now making the decision about a change of course."

Also feeding into the White House are the views of the Pentagon, the state department, the intelligence services and, the catalyst for the rethink, the Iraq Study Group report, published last month. The debate is being conducted against a domestic political background in which opposition to the war is growing.

A senior US military source identified the core of the problem as the US pursuit of democratic government ahead of security and economic reconstruction. What Washington had ended up with was an Iraqi government that shared different objectives from America: establishing the dominance of the Shia rather than fostering reconciliation and unity. He said the view of the US military in Iraq is that the police force was so riddled with sectarianism that the only possible course was to disband it and start again; it was also rife in the Iraqi army, a trend encouraged by the Iraqi government.

"We are still in charge. The Iraqi government is a facade," the military source said. "How can our strategy be to accelerate the handover to this government and the Iraq army. This is a rush to failure."

The British government privately shares the US administration's disappointment with Mr Maliki.

Saddam's execution posed a special problem for the British government, given its opposition to the death penalty. The Foreign Office said it had made repeated approaches to the Iraqi government, making clear its opposition to the execution. Officials had planned a last-minute plea for clemency by the ambassador, Dominic Asquith, to the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, and Mr Maliki. But the plan was abandoned. A Foreign Office source confirmed yesterday that no final approach to the Iraqi government was made by a senior British diplomat.

Tony Blair, questioned about the prospect of the death penalty in November, proved initially reluctant to denounce it, but eventually did so. On Saturday, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, reiterated Britain's opposition to the death penalty but welcomed the fact that he had been tried by an Iraqi court. "He has now been held to account." she said.

Jag