Iraqi premier makes his case to Bush

Iraq’s prime minister pressed President Bush on Saturday to give his government a freer hand to fight Sunni Arab insurgents and neutralize the Shiite Muslim militias knocking the country off balance, in a conversation meant to smooth tensions that had flared over security disagreements and election-year rhetoric.

Bush, in a 50-minute videoconference with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, upheld Washington’s commitment to his Shiite-dominated government despite its failure to rein in the Shiite militias, which form a nucleus of Maliki’s political base.

Maliki and U.S. officials have pressured anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr to crack down on a powerful and volatile militia nominally under his control. On Saturday, several members of his organization said that Sadr had designated a committee of loyalists to investigate and purge his organization of the most egregious troublemakers.

The committee has already expelled and publicly denounced 30 self-styled Sadr movement members, said Qusai Abdul-Wahab, a member of parliament loyal to the cleric.

Saturday’s conversation between Bush and Maliki followed a week of recriminations between U.S. officials in Baghdad and the Iraqi government over the potential disbanding and disarming of Sadr’s Al Mahdi army and other paramilitary groups allegedly responsible for the kidnapping, torture and killing of thousands of Sunni Arab men.

At least 20 such slaying victims, some bearing electrical drill and hot-iron wounds on their bodies and gunshot wounds to the head, were discovered Saturday in Baghdad.

At a private meeting Friday, Maliki demanded of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that he respect Iraq’s sovereignty, aides to the prime minister said. Maliki’s reported message came in the face of mounting American demands for his government to take security steps against Sadr.

Khalilzad and other U.S. officials have referred to timelines that the Iraqi government must abide by or face unspecified consequences.

But there was no mention of timelines or deadlines in a joint statement issued Saturday after Bush and Maliki spoke, just a commitment to “accelerating the pace of training the Iraqi security force, and transferring responsibility for security” to Iraqis.

“As leaders of two great countries, we are committed to the security and prosperity of a democratic Iraq and the global fight against terrorism which affects all our citizens,” the statement said.

With nine days left before Americans go to the polls, Bush has tried to bolster support for the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq by acknowledging setbacks and embracing a schedule of benchmarks for Iraq’s political progress.

But Maliki’s opposition to deadlines and his criticism that the U.S. attitude toward his government has encouraged the insurgents have put the Bush administration on the defensive.

“There are no strains in the relationship,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said Saturday.

He added that Maliki was “not America’s man in Iraq. The United States is there in a role to assist him. He’s the prime minister -- he’s the leader of the Iraqi people. He is, in fact, the sovereign leader of Iraq.”

Maliki asked Bush to give him the power to consolidate authority over security forces. The hodgepodge security arrangement in Baghdad, he told Bush, was allowing insurgents to flee one area for another after staging attacks, said Haidar Abadi, a confidant of the prime minister and a leader of his Islamic Dawa Party.

Maliki asked Bush to let his security forces enter areas controlled by U.S. forces, Abadi said.

“He asked the president to allow the Iraqi government to have a stronger and freer hand in managing the security situation in Iraq,” he said. “We don’t have control over the movement of security forces.”

Sharp disagreements over the handling of the Shiite militias have frayed relations between Maliki’s government and U.S. officials in Baghdad.

Khalilzad has demanded that the Iraqi government take the same zero-tolerance stance toward Shiite militias that it has with regard to Sunni Arab insurgents. But Maliki told Bush he had a different formula for disarming the Shiite fighters, Abadi said.

There are signs that Maliki’s approach is producing some results.

Shortly after he visited Sadr in his Najaf home to discuss security issues, the cleric created the purging committee and gave it the power to investigate those purporting to act in the name of his organization and expel those involved in criminal activity.

The committee is headed by Sheik Mohammed Fartusi and Sheik Ali Kufi, two captains in the Sadr movement.

“The committee has great authority,” Sheik Hazem Araji, a Sadr deputy in Baghdad, said in an interview. “Any violator will be kicked out of the Mahdi army and their name will be publicly announced.”

Maliki told Bush that the Shiite militias would disappear when the Sunnis’ campaign of bombing and shooting civilians and officials and attacking Shiite holy sites subsided.

There were few signs Saturday that such a prospect was on the horizon.

At least one U.S. service member was reported killed in Iraq, bringing to 98 the number of American troops killed here this month. The Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, died Friday of combat injuries sustained in the western province of Al Anbar, the military said.

Insurgents blew up a minor Shiite shrine near the northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday, placing a bomb in the tomb of Imam Ismael in the village of Shikha.

Authorities found the bodies of four Iraqi soldiers in northern Baghdad. Twelve other soldiers were kidnapped while driving through a Sunni insurgent stronghold north of the capital.

daragahi@latimes.com

Times staff writers Nicole Gaouette in Washington, Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and special correspondents in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk contributed to this report.