Two Senators Call for New Leader in Iraq
By THOM SHANKER and MARK MAZZETTI
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after completing a two-day tour of Iraq, said Monday that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki should be voted from office because it has proved incapable of reaching the political compromises required to end violence there.
The Democratic chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, and the committee’s ranking Republican, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who traveled to Iraq together, issued a joint statement that was only slightly more temperate than Mr. Levin’s remarks. They warned that in the view of politicians in Washington, and of the American people, “time has run out” on attempts to forge a political consensus in Baghdad.
Mr. Levin said that in his view, the political stalemate in Iraq could be attributed to Mr. Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials who were unable to operate independently of religious and sectarian leaders.
“I’ve concluded that this is a government which cannot, is unable to, achieve a political settlement,” Mr. Levin said. “It is too bound to its own sectarian roots, and it is too tied to forces in Iraq which do not yield themselves to compromise.”
In a conference call with reporters from Tel Aviv, Mr. Levin called on the Iraqi Parliament to vote the Maliki government from power because it had “totally and utterly failed” to reach a political settlement, and to replace it with a team better able to forge national unity.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after completing a two-day tour of Iraq, said Monday that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki should be voted from office because it has proved incapable of reaching the political compromises required to end violence there.
The Democratic chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, and the committee’s ranking Republican, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who traveled to Iraq together, issued a joint statement that was only slightly more temperate than Mr. Levin’s remarks. They warned that in the view of politicians in Washington, and of the American people, “time has run out” on attempts to forge a political consensus in Baghdad.
Mr. Levin said that in his view, the political stalemate in Iraq could be attributed to Mr. Maliki and other senior Iraqi officials who were unable to operate independently of religious and sectarian leaders.
“I’ve concluded that this is a government which cannot, is unable to, achieve a political settlement,” Mr. Levin said. “It is too bound to its own sectarian roots, and it is too tied to forces in Iraq which do not yield themselves to compromise.”
In a conference call with reporters from Tel Aviv, Mr. Levin called on the Iraqi Parliament to vote the Maliki government from power because it had “totally and utterly failed” to reach a political settlement, and to replace it with a team better able to forge national unity.
(Continued here.)
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