Leader asks for the help of Iran

The pace of diplomacy is stepping up as a summit nears.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's president turned to Iran on Monday for help to stem the bloodshed, and Iraqi officials said talks this week between President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will focus on giving Iraqis more control so U.S. forces can withdraw.
"We are in dire need of Iran's help in establishing security and stability in Iraq," Iran's state-run television quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying after he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.
The increased pace of diplomacy comes as a bipartisan U.S. panel headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton is expected to put forth recommendations soon to the White House on alterations to Iraq policy. Seeking help from Iran and Syria was believed to be among the Iraq Study Group's proposal after American elections and calls for a speedy U.S. withdrawal.
Most important
Looking ahead to the Bush-Maliki summit in Amman, Jordan, the Iraqi side viewed the talks as the most important between leaders of the two countries since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, according to the two top officials with intimate knowledge of planning for the Wednesday-Thursday meeting.
Iraqi officials believe the summit will deal with giving Iraqi forces more control over security. The Iraqis expect President Bush to agree to such an arrangement, and they say al-Maliki will then ask for the Americans to start discussing a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, according to one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
But Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said it was unlikely Bush would address with the Iraqi leader the issue of any U.S. troop withdrawals.
"We're not at the point where the president is going to be in a position to lay out a comprehensive plan," Hadley told reporters aboard Air Force One.
The second Iraqi official, who spoke anonymously for the same reason, said American officials had indicated in preparatory talks in Baghdad that Bush was open to increasing the pace of the security hand-over.
"The responsibilities of U.S. troops will decrease when security is transferred to Iraqis, and that will mean the Americans have more soldiers here than they need," the second official said.
Pressuring Sunnis
Also on the Iraqi agenda, the officials said, would be al-Maliki's insistence that the United States pressure its Sunni Arab allies in the region to stop what Baghdad claims is support for the Iraqi insurgency.
Lastly, al-Maliki wants to get an outline of the U.S. view of the strategic relationship that would exist as the Americans draw down their presence in the country, the Iraqi officials said.
Hadley said the conflict in Iraq had entered "a new phase," requiring changes.
"Obviously everyone would agree things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough," he said. "We're clearly in a new phase characterized by an increase in sectarian violence that requires us to adapt to that new phase."
Bush and al-Maliki "need to be talking about how to do that and what steps Iraq needs to take and how we can support" Iraq's leaders, Hadley said, rejecting suggestions that Iraq had already spiraled into a civil war.
As the summit approached, Britain said Monday it expected to withdraw thousands of its 7,000 military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, and Poland and Italy announced the impending pullout of their remaining troops.
Mortars hit oil facility
Meanwhile, mortar rounds crashed into an oil processing facility near the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, igniting a huge blaze, and a U.S. Air Force jet with one pilot crashed while supporting American soldiers fighting in Anbar province, a hotbed of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.
The government fully lifted a curfew on Monday, allowing vehicles back on the roads and reopening the international airport on the fourth day after suspected Sunni insurgents used bombs and mortars to kill more than 200 people in Sadr City, a large Shiite slum, in the worst attack by militants in the war. Sectarian violence continued across the country with a total of 91 people killed or found dead.
The fire at the pipeline filtering facility shut down the flow of crude to the massive Beiji refinery to the southwest, according to an official at the North Oil Co., who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. The flames erupted at 6:30 p.m. and burned for several hours before they were extinguished, the U.S. military said.
The facility is 15 miles northwest of Kirkuk, a city which sits amid some of Iraq's richest crude oil deposits.
Earlier Monday, a bomb exploded beneath an oil pipeline south of Baghdad and set it on fire, and Iraqi and American forces were deployed to secure the area, police said.
No injuries were reported in the 7:30 a.m. blast near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said police 1st Lt. Haider Satar.
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