US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, facing tough questions about Iraq from both Democratic and Republican senators, asserted that progress was being made in securing the country but declined to predict when US forces could withdraw or to rule out widening the war to Syria.
In three-and-a-half hours of hearings at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rice was both conciliatory and combative, rebutting the gloomy assessments from senators of both parties but at the end offering a weary concession to Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat.
"I understand that, yes, it might not work," Rice told Obama, referring to US plans to raise the effectiveness of Iraqi forces and heal Iraq's fractious society. "But every day we have to get up and work at our hardest to make it work."
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
It was a day that echoed the anguish, anger and skepticism that opinion polls show have begun to dominate the thinking of Americans. The hearing was punctuated by a heckler who called for an end to the war, only to be hustled out. There were also a few glimmerings of a change in the administration's tone on a few subjects.
Rice said for the first time that US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad had the "flexibility" to reach out to Iranian envoys to discuss the problem of insurgents entering Iraq from Iranian territory and other matters related to the stability of the country. Such contacts have been forbidden for the last couple years.
"We're considering whether that might be useful," she said of such contacts.
There were also hints in her testimony of mounting impatience with countries around the world unwilling to support Iraq financially and politically, and the unwillingness of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Arab countries to do more to encourage Iraqi Sunnis to work with Shiites.
The Iraqi government also did not escape criticism for its troubles unifying the country and for not working with other governments. She said Iraqis "must continue to come together in order to build their nation" and that the government "must forge a more effective partnership with foreign governments."
"I have said our strategy is to clear, hold and build," Rice said. "The enemy's strategy is to infect, terrorize and pull down."
She explained that this meant efforts to clear out insurgents' sanctuaries, occupy these areas with Iraqi and other forces and build a political consensus while reconstructing the country.
Led by Senator Joseph Biden, all eight Democrats on the committee expressed doubts about administration goals, as did most of the six Republicans at the hearing. Senators Mel Martinez and George Allen, both Republicans, offered the most extensive praise for the administration on its handling of Iraq.
Several Democrats pressed Rice to set some kind of timetable for withdrawing troops, and Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican, and chairman of the committee, said that even though withdrawal timelines were "unwise," Americans "need to more fully understand the basis upon which our troops are likely to come home."
But Rice said troop withdrawals had to be based on results, not arbitrary timetables. She declined a request by Senator Paul Sarbanes, a Democrat, to say whether US troops could be pulled out in 10 years, saying it was "not appropriate" to "try and speculate" about such matters.
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