Sen. McCain meets with officials in Iraq
He said the visit wasn’t a campaign photo opportunity.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday for a visit with Iraqi and U.S. diplomatic and military officials.
The trip by McCain, who has linked his political future to U.S. military success in the nearly five-year-old war, coincided with the 20th anniversary of a horrific chemical weapons attack in northern Iraq.
McCain met with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh and planned to meet with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, according to the U.S. Embassy. Further details of McCain’s visit, which had been anticipated, were not being released for security reasons, the embassy said.
Before leaving the United States, McCain, one of the foremost proponents of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, said the trip to the Middle East and Europe was for fact-finding purposes, not a campaign photo opportunity.
But he expressed public worries that militants in Iraq might try to influence the November general election.
“Yes, I worry about it,” he said, responding to a question during a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania. “And I know they pay attention, because of the intercepts we have of their communications.”
McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., two top supporters of his presidential ambitions.
The weeklong trip will take McCain to Israel, Britain and France, and include his first meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He also is expected to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials.
His focus in Iraq was thought to be the drop in sectarian violence and U.S. and civilian casualties since last summer. Exactly what was discussed, however, remained unclear since numerous telephone calls to aides traveling with McCain went unanswered.
McCain’s trip to Iraq is his eighth. Last November, he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
On a visit last April, the Arizona senator criticized news reports he said focused unfairly on violence, and said Americans were not getting a “full picture” of progress in the security crackdown in the capital.
McCain was combative toward reporters’ questions in the heavily guarded Green Zone, and responded testily to a question about his comment that it was safe to walk some Baghdad streets.
He later acknowledged traveling with armed U.S. military escorts.