Bush meets with Iraqi vice president

Mar 15, 2007, 17:59 GMT

Washington - US President George W Bush and Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi met at the White House on Thursday to discuss the effort to secure Baghdad and reconcile differences between the country's religious communities.

Bush said the addition of 21,500 US troops to Iraq, mostly in Baghdad, aims to give the Iraqi government time to 'do the hard work of reconciliation.'

'It's hard work to overcome distrust that has built up over the years because your country was ruled by a tyrant that created distrust amongst people,' Bush said, referring to decades of rule by Saddam Hussein, who was executed in December.

Mahdi said the bolstering of US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad has been making progress in quelling the violence that has ravaged the capital city, but emphasized the importance of resolving disputes like the sharing of oil revenues between Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations.

'We are not finished, but we are doing better than expected in this plan,' Mahdi said. 'This will not solve the whole problem. The reconciliation process will take our political agenda forward.'

The meeting came as the US Senate continues a debate on a resolution calling on Bush to begin withdrawals of American soldiers within four months. The Democratic-controlled Congress strongly opposes the expansion of the US military presence in Iraq.

The Senate opened debate on Wednesday, and Democratic senators offered harsh criticism of Bush's policy in Iraq.

'Now it is time for the Congress to explain to the Iraqi people: 'It is your country. We cannot save you from yourselves',' said Carl Levin, the Democratic senator who chairs the Senate Armed Service Committee.

On Wednesday, the quarterly Pentagon report to Congress said violence in Iraq during the last three months of 2006 reached its worst level in more than three years as attacks on US-led coalition forces and Iraqi civilians rose.

Most of the violence was centred in Baghdad and the three surrounding provinces Anbar, Salah ad Din and Diyala. There were a record 45 daily attacks in Baghdad during that time period, the report said.

The report said the conflict in Iraq has shifted to a sectarian fight between Shiites and Sunnis but that violence has also caused a rise in support for terrorist militias like al-Qaeda in Iraq.