Panetta in Iraq to see officials

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

From one war front to another Sunday, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta hopped from a U.S. outpost in Afghanistan’s southern desert to Baghdad, where he sought to encourage Iraqi leaders to decide soon whether they want a residual American military force beyond year’s end.

He refused to say whether the Obama administration wants the extension, but he expressed concern at a spike in U.S. deaths caused by what American officials believe are sophisticated explosive devices made in Iran.

Panetta prepared for talks today with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other senior members of a government politically divided more than a year after national elections. Iraq has gone that long without defense or interior ministers, whose departments are responsible for the military and police.

The approximately 46,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq are to depart by the end of 2011 under an agreement negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration, which went to war in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein’s government.

Asking even a few thousand to stay longer carries political risk, leaders in both countries say.

A signature pledge of President Barack Obama 2008 election campaign was to get the U.S. out of Iraq. For Iraqis fed up with violence, a longer U.S. presence looks like a formula for further strife.

The Associated Press reported July 5 that the White House is offering to keep up to 10,000 troops in Iraq next year, despite opposition from key Democrats who demand that Obama bring home the troops as promised.