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BAGHDAD / WASHINGTON - US President Bush is later today expected to propose sending more than 20,000 more troops to Iraq amid scepticism in Baghdad the plan will end the incessant violence.
US officials said Bush wants to deploy 21,500 extra US troops to join around 130,000 already in Iraq. Four thousand would go to the volatile Anbar province, but most would go to Baghdad, where one out of four Iraqis live.
US commanders in Iraq have said the key to the success of Bush's revamped strategy is easing sectarian and insurgent violence in the capital.
Police recovered the bodies of 60 people with gunshot wounds and signs of torture from various parts of Baghdad in the 24 hours to Wednesday evening local time, an Interior Ministry source said.
Streets were quiet in a Sunni insurgent bastion in the capital after US and Iraqi forces, backed by fighter jets and helicopters, killed 50 people on Tuesday. That battle may have been part of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's pledge to crush militants, regardless of their sect.
Bush called Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite political leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and assured him of support for the government's plans for a security crackdown in Baghdad, a senior official in Hakim's SCIRI party said.
Iraqis weary of sectarian death squads and insurgent bombs nearly four years after the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein voiced scepticism more troops would help. Bush makes his address in the White House at 3pm on Thursday NZT.
"The new strategies they are talking about are not going to solve any problem, only the people of this country will manage to solve this problem," said Baghdad resident Falah Mehdi.
A defence official said Bush would announce an increase in the training of Iraqi security forces through a program in which US trainers live and work within an Iraqi unit.
President Bush has a tough sell ahead of him, after nearly four years of war and scenes of carnage that have undercut his argument that victory is possible in Iraq.
Democrats in control of the US Congress vowed ahead of the address in the White House library that they would fight what they called an escalation of the conflict, which has already claimed more than 3,000 American lives.
Democratic leaders in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, who planned to meet Bush on Wednesday before his speech, said they would seek a vote on his planned troop increase.
"In my view, we may be about to make a critical mistake by moving in exactly the wrong direction in Iraq. Instead of a surge we should be looking at a way to begin orderly troop reduction," said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd.
Public opposition
Many of Bush's own Republicans expressed unease and a USA Today/Gallup poll said Americans oppose the idea of increasing troop levels in Iraq by 61 per cent to 36 per cent.
"He does understand that it's important to bring the public back to this war and restore public confidence in support for the mission," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.
Bush will couple his troop announcement with a new call for Iraq's government to meet political milestones aimed at ending sectarian violence, aides said.
But he was not expected to give the Iraqis a timetable for action. Aides said action on many milestones is already under way, such as an oil-revenue sharing plan, constitutional reform and allowing former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life.
"We think a lot of those are going to happen naturally and soon," said a senior administration official.
Bush's troops plan follows personal commitments from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to provide more Iraqi troops in Baghdad and elsewhere and a promise not to shield radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The first wave of US troops are to go to Iraq over the next few weeks.
CBS News said Bush intended to send half the new deployment first, with the second half to be phased in over March, April and May if the Iraqis get serious about making Baghdad safer.
New York Republican Rep. Peter King told MSNBC after meeting Bush on Tuesday that the Iraqi government has to help improve security.
"And the president is going to make it clear to the Iraqis that there will be consequences if they don't live up to their end of it," King said.
Bush will announce he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East for talks with regional leaders, urging them to help Iraq's government.
His plan comes a month after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended direct talks with Iran and Syria. Bush, who has rejected direct talks with them, is expected to denounce Iran and Syria in his speech as unhelpful influences in Iraq.
- REUTERS
