US defends lack of progress in Iraq

The US has defended Iraq's lack of political progress after Jalal Talabani, the country's president, visited the White House.

Pressed on the lack of progress towards reaching political benchmarks that George Bush has called critical to quelling sectarian violence, Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said "Iraq is a sovereign country".

"The president can push. He did not give them a specific deadline. But, President Talabani also recognised how important it was to get these done as soon as possible."


Perino said Bush and Talabani discussed the sluggish move towards legislation to share oil revenues among Iraq's sectarian groups; to hold local elections, and to rehabilitate former members of the executed Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

They did not talk about Kurdish fighters using Iraq as a base to conduct raids into Turkey or about US legislation calling for greater autonomy for Iraq's regional governments – the so-called soft partition.



The White House made no mention of reports that Talabani would press Bush for the release of an Iranian official who was arrested by US forces while visiting Iraqi Kurdistan last month.



At a separate Washington media briefing on Tuesday, the new US military deputy commander in Iraq attempted to paint an optimistic picture of security conditions as a result of the eight month old US security "surge" operation........

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