ARAB-US RELATIONS - Nov 20 - Victory In Iraq Impossible, Says Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who has advised the Bush administration on the war in Iraq, says he no longer believed a military victory is possible in the conflict. "If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control . . . I don't believe that is possible", Kissinger told BBC television. His dire assessment of the war, and view that the US should engage Iraq's neighbours in seeking a diplomatic solution, reinforced calls by Democratic lawmakers in Washington for the White House to speak to Iran and Syria to help stem the tide of violence in Iraq. Kissinger's remarks came as Walid Muallem, Syria's FM, became the most senior Syrian politician to visit Baghdad since the US-led invasion. Muallem said violence in Iraq would be reduced if a timetable was set for the withdrawal of US forces. But interviews with senior lawmakers on US talk shows underscored the wide divide that exists not only on the question of whether engaging Syria and Iran would be fruitful, but whether the White House needed to boost US troop deployment in the short term or begin the process of bringing troops home. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, suggested on ABC's This Week that he would consider calling for American troops to leave Iraq if the White House did not agree to send additional forces to secure the country - a proposition Pres Bush has previously rejected. McCain said US troops were "fighting and dying for a failed policy", but added that he would "exhaust every possibility" to fix the situation before calling for troops to abandon Iraq, because the consequences of losing the war were "severe". Another senator, Democrat Carl Levin, who will take on the chairmanship of the armed services committee, countered on CNN's Late Edition that he supported a phased withdrawal of troops to put a "pressure point on the neighbours who do not want Iraq to disintegrate". The depth of the sectarian violence in Iraq was underscored by the news that Ammar al-Saffar, the deputy health minister, was kidnapped from his Baghdad home just one day after another Shi'ite politician, Ali al-Adhadh, was killed. A Sunni insurgent group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 22 people in Hilla, the mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood south of Baghdad, in retaliation for a mass kidnapping from a Sunni-run education institute last week. Separately, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement due to be released on Nov 20 that the just-concluded trial of Saddam Hussein and members of his regime was marred by so many flaws that the verdict was unsound. "The court's conduct, as documented in this report, reflects a basic lack of understanding of fundamental fair trial principles, and how to uphold them in the conduct of a relatively complex trial. The result is a trial that did not meet key fair trial standards", the report concluded. Hussein and two other members of his regime were sentenced to death on November 5, following a year-long trial on charges related to a campaign of reprisals against the Shi'ite village of Dujail. Among the flaws listed in the 97-page report was the presentation of evidence that was not given in advance of the trial to the defence and testimony from absent witnesses that was read into the record without giving the defence a chance to challenge those witnesses. Administrative problems included lack of planning for the security of defence counsels, three of whom were assassinated. In addition, the HRW report argued that the evidence had big gaps, in particular its failure to show Hussein's regime worked.