Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military will be in Iraq for years, and setting a timetable for troop reductions would embolden the insurgents and hamper a new government, three U.S. senators said after meeting Iraqi officials.
``The challenge is still extremely great,'' Republican Senator John McCain said in an interview from Baghdad broadcast today on NBC's ``Meet The Press'' program. ``It's going to be a long, tough struggle.''
McCain, of Arizona, and Senators Hillary Clinton, a New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the threat from insurgents was still too great and the Iraqi forces too inexperienced to hand off security responsibilities any time soon.
The three were among a U.S. congressional delegation that met with Iraqi officials and members of the U.S. military in Baghdad following the Jan. 30 election of a 275-member assembly. Insurgents are continuing their attacks U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies, including eight separate bombings yesterday in Baghdad that killed at least 50 people.
The lawmakers, all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the election was an important milestone for Iraq and for U.S. policy, though it did not diminish the insurgency or the efforts of terrorist to make Iraq a battleground.
``I've been here three times and it's more dangerous than it's ever been,'' Graham said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``We need to be patient in America because our footprint here will be large for a long time.''
Timetables
Recent polls in the U.S. show Americans favor setting a deadline for a withdrawal. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed for a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published last week said the election showed that President George W. Bush's policy toward the region is working and 60 percent favored the administration setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces.
U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials in Iraq have conducted secret, direct talks with some representatives of the insurgents, who have indicated they may seek a political solution to the conflict, Time magazine reported today, citing unnamed U.S. officials and leaders of the insurgency. None of the discussions are officially sanctioned by the U.S. or the interim Iraqi government, Time said.
Along with quashing the insurgency, the Iraqis still are a long way from setting up government institutions and building a self-sustaining economy, Graham, 49, said.
Clinton, who was interviewed on CBS and NBC, said more important than setting a time limit on the U.S. presence in Iraq was reducing the number of U.S. casualties by getting Iraqis to take over more responsibility for security.
At least 1,462 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq and more than 10,000 have been wounded since the invasion in March 2003, according to Pentagon figures.
Graham said Lieutenant General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander training Iraqi troops, told the visiting lawmakers it would be take to the end of the year before the number of local recruits trained would ``dramatically improve.''
McCain and Clinton, who have been critical of Bush's management of the war and the subsequent occupation, said past disagreements about U.S. policy toward Iraq must be put aside to ensure the country can form a government and not descend into civil war.
``We're paying a very heavy price for the mistakes we made,'' McCain, 68, said. ``But having said that, we cannot afford to lose.''
Clinton, 57, said ``it is not in America's interest'' for the Iraqi government to fail.
America's European allies should be prepared to play a role in training and equipping the Iraqi troops, said McCain. They should also play a role in maintaining security so that United Nations workers could also be more involved, said Graham.
To contact the reporter on this story: Carlos Torres in Washington ctorres2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 20, 2005 15:31 EST
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