AL-ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFP) — US President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday for "war-council" meetings with his top military advisers and Iraqi leaders to see if a US troop buildup is working.
Bush, on his first visit to Iraq since June 2006, was accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and met up with his Defence Secretary Robert Gates and top military commanders at the desert airbase of Al-Asad in the restive Anbar province west of Baghdad.
"This is the last big gathering of the president's military advisors and the Iraqi leadership before the president decides on the way forward," said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman travelling with Gates.
"This is very much a decisional meeting. This meeting will put him much closer to a decision if he hasn't made one yet," he said.
The conclave comes just days before General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker -- both of whom he met here -- go before a sceptical Congress to report on whether a buildup in US forces has succeeded in setting the conditions for political reconciliation.
A US intelligence assessment last month found that the so-called troop "surge" which took effect in February has led to uneven improvements in security but little political progress.
A report by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, is reported to have concluded that only three of 18 "benchmarks" of progress have been met since the start of the surge.
A key question before Bush is whether to prolong the surge to give the Iraqis more time to reconcile, and if so, for how long. If not, then how quickly should US troops be brought home?
Army officials have said current force levels cannot be sustained much beyond April without extending tours of duty beyond 15 months, a move opposed by the army's civilian leadership.
The deployment of 28,500 reinforcements brought the US total in Iraq to 155,000 troops.
Travelling to Al-Asad Air Base rather than Baghdad gave Bush an opportunity to highlight the dramatic shift in sentiment in Anbar, where former Sunni insurgents have joined with US forces to fight Al-Qaeda.
Bush met with Sunni tribal sheikhs who have given his administration hopes of a turnaround in the deadly Sunni insurgency unleashed after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
"The president has been inspired and pleased with what he has seen in Anbar," said Morrell, who said the session with the tribal leaders was also an opportunity to encourage them to reconcile with the Iraqi government.
Bush was due here to meet Iraq's embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other top government officials.
The US military hopes to expand on the successes in Anbar, but that will require gaining the cooperation of Maliki's Shiite-led government, which has viewed the developments in the bastion of Sunni resistance with suspicion.
Maliki -- under fire both at home and abroad for failing to bring stability to the country -- has visited Anbar province only once before, and his government has been slow to provide funds for its local government.
"There are those inside the Maliki government who might want to characterise this as arming a Sunni opposition to the Shia based Maliki government," a senior US defence official travelling with Gates said.
"That is one of the reasons we have said time after time after time, 'We need to get Maliki out there, this needs to be an Iraqi process to connect the top down reconciliation with the bottom up reconciliation.'"
One of Gate's greatest concerns, he said, "is that this not be a temporary marriage of convenience."
Bush flew to Iraq on his way to Australia for a meeting of leaders from the Asia Pacific region, two hours after Gates arrived under a cloak of secrecy.
Others with Bush at the base included national security adviser Stephen Hadley, General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Fallon, the commander of US forces in the Middle East.
Morrell said Bush has "assembled essentially his war council here and they are all meeting with Iraqi leaders to discuss the way forward."
Bush met with Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on Friday amid reports of deepening concerns over the strains on US ground forces and the military's ability to respond to crises elsewhere.
"There is plenty of room for each of the elements in the chain of command, and the service secretaries to offer their advice to the president, whether they do it independently or collectively," said the defence official travelling with Gates.
"It is my understanding that they are not at that point where they have separate opinions, separate views, such that they would have to take an independent route to the president," he said.
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