US Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Iraqi leaders on Friday to end sectarian conflict and warned that US troops would not stay on indefinitely if no progress is made.
"Our commitment to Iraq is long-term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraqi streets open-endedly," he told reporters after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
Gates, on his third visit to Iraq since taking office, said he had spoken to the Shiite prime minister about "reaching out to the Sunnis" to end the bloodletting that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Following the meeting, Maliki repeated that his priorities were national reconciliation, restoring security and legislative reform.
"The prime minister is optimistic that Iraqis of whatever political and ideological faction will be able to escape from the trenches of sectarianism for the sake of the country," a statement from his office said.
Gates said the ongoing Baghdad security plan, backed by extra US troops, aimed to give Maliki time and space for political progress, not to end the conflict itself.
"The surge is a strategy for buying time for progress towards justice and reconciliation in Iraq," he said, while acknowledging that recent deadly insurgent bomb attacks had been a setback.
In the US, President George W. Bush defended the operation.
"There are still horrific attacks in Iraq, such as the bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday, but the direction of the fight is beginning to shift," he said.
Bush added that the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, "reports that it will be later this year before we can judge the potential for success, but the first indications are beginning to emerge."
"And they show that so far the operation is meeting expectations." Bush said.
Baghdad, where 80,000 US and Iraqi troops are implementing the new security crackdown, was on Wednesday rocked by bombs that killed almost 200 people on one of the bloodiest days of the war to date.
One bomb targeted a crowded market and bus station, killing 140 people in the biggest single attack since the March 2003 invasion.
But Gates, who also met top US generals and his Iraqi counterpart, Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Obeidi, defended the two-month-old "surge" strategy against domestic critics who see it as a failure.
"It's not a surprise that the results are mixed at this point," he said, blaming the bombings on al-Qaeda. "We expected tough times."
In Washington, Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid bluntly said on Thursday that the Iraq war was "lost," an opinion disputed by Gates.
"I have great respect for Senator Reid, but on the issue of whether the war is lost I respectfully disagree," Gates said.
Bush and the Democrats, who now control Congress and hold the purse-strings on military spending, are locked in a bitter feud over the war.
The Democrats want to include a date for the withdrawal of troops in a bill sanctioning new funds for the war, a move the Republican president has threatened to veto.
Before leaving the fortified Baghdad Green Zone by US military helicopter on Friday, Gates met Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents, Tareq al-Hashimi and Adel Abdel Mahdi.
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