IRAQ - Baker-Hamilton Panel For Radical Change.

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) on Dec. 6 called for a radical change of course in US policy, saying conditions in Iraq were "grave and deteriorating". Its report set out how the US was spending $2 bn a week on an unpopular conflict in which nearly 100 Americans were dying monthly. The ISG said that, more than three years after the US-led invasion, its forces were stretched "nearly to the breaking point". On Dec. 6 alone, 10 US soldiers were killed in Iraq.

Challenging many of the tenets of President Bush's foreign policy, the bipartisan 10-member ISG said a dramatic change of course was needed to avoid "severe consequences". It warned: "A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian crisis".

The report is particularly damaging to British PM Tony Blair, who travelled to Washington on Dec. 6 to meet Bush, both because it highlights the limits of British influence on US policymaking and because the UK premier is inextricably linked with the Bush administration's battle plan.

The report urged Bush to boost efforts to train Iraqi forces, which it said could let most US troops leave by early 2008. The report urged the White House to increase pressure on the Iraqi government and launch a Middle East initiative.

Bush welcomed what he called a "very tough assessment" and vowed to take its conclusions "seriously". He said the report would provide "common ground" for Democrats and Republicans to work together. But the report was attacked by analysts on the right and left. One said it put forward a "tired and discredited consensus". Others said the report was an anti-climax. "An elephant gives birth to a mouse", was the headline of an article by Tony Cordesman, an analyst at the Centre for International Strategic Studies.

The ISG said there was "no magic formula". It said: "no one can guarantee that any course of action in Iraq...will stop sectarian warfare". It chided Iraq's government for "not adequately advancing national reconciliation" or providing basic security or services. It said the US "must not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops in Iraq". It added: "If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security, and governance, the US should reduce its political, military or economic support".

The ISG recommended that the US move soldiers from combat missions to training Iraqi forces, saying the change could be accomplished without raising the number of American troops. The report urged the US to hold talks with Iran and Syria - something Bush has adamantly refused to do. Carl Levin, incoming Democrat chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the report a "major blow" to the administration's "stay the course" policy.

The 142-page report, which is strikingly pessimistic in its tone and candid in admitting there is no guarantee that the adoption of its 79 recommendations would reverse the deterioration in Iraq, is divided in two. As a whole it amounts to a devastating repudiation of the administration's existing strategy in Iraq and a plea for the White House to build a bipartisan consensus at home and a diplomatic front abroad to reverse the "slide toward chaos" in Iraq.

The first part assesses the consequences of continuing to "stay the course" in Iraq. "Making no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at high cost", it says, which would include the further expense of American lives and money. "The longer the US remains in Iraq without progress the more resentment will grow among Iraqis who believe they are subjects of a repressive American occupation". But the report dismisses other courses of action that have been floated, including a partition of Iraq into three ethnic entities, a drastic increase in the US troop presence from the existing 140,000-strong force and a precipitate withdrawal of US combat forces."America's military capacity is stretched thin", it says, adding: "We do not have the troops or equipment to make a sustained increase in our presence".

The second and more detailed part of the report puts forward a set of recommendations for what it calls "new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region and a change in the primary mission of US forces in Iraq that will enable the US to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly". Those would involve a "new diplomatic offensive" in the broader Middle East region involving direct talks with Iraq's neighbours, including Iran and Syria, and a "renewed and sustained commitment by the US to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts". It would also involve setting the Iraqi government new and clearer milestones for achieving reconciliation between sectarian groups and taking growing responsibility for Iraq's internal security.

US assistance to Baghdad would be linked to its achievement of these milestones, with the report saying: "The Iraqi government needs to show its own citizens - and the citizens of the US - that it deserves continued support". It recommends a withdrawal of most US combat forces by early 2008 but a drastic short-term increase in the number of army trainers embedded as advisers with Iraqi forces. The report avoids setting a timeline for pulling out combat forces and recognises that the US will need a "robust" military presence in Iraq and the region for years to come.

The ISG report in effect urges the Bush administration to turn its whole Middle East policy on its head, while challenging the basic assumptions that led the US to war in Iraq. Gone are the goals and presumptions of the neo-conservatives (neo-cons) and liberal hawks who advocated the 2003 invasion and still threaten war with Iran, to be replaced by the "realist" aims that characterised US foreign policy when Bush's father was president and Baker his foreign secretary.

Hamilton told a packed news conference: "We tried to set forth achievable goals. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here [the assembled 10-member panel] are pragmatic public officials". Far from spreading democracy through the region as the Bush administration envisaged in 2003, the report wants to stop the fires of conflict reaching beyond Iraq.

That message is also being carried to Bush by Robert Gates, the incoming defence secretary who until recently was part of the ISG. Instead of occupying Baghdad to open the route to fixing Jerusalem, the report says "there must be a renewed and sustained commitment" by the US to a "comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts". This includes talks between Israel and Syria, and Israel and the Palestinians. The report tells the White House to end its policy of isolating Iran and Syria and engage them "constructively" instead. It says: "No country in the region wants a chaotic Iraq", rejecting neo-con claims that enemies of the US want just that.

The White House, while echoing Bush's statement that he would carefully consider the proposals, quickly sought to draw lines in the sand. Spokesman Tony Snow reiterated the president's rejection of "one on one" talks with Iran unless it first suspend its nuclear fuel cycle development. This view is not shared by all officials in the administration and the report is likely to sharpen internal battlelines. But with the departure from the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld and several of his hawkish allies, the pendulum could swing in favour of the pragmatists.

A powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), responded by rejecting any assertion that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to stabilising Iraq. The key, it said, was Iran's "destructive" policies.

Specifically, the ISG calls for a "new diplomatic offensive" to be launched by Dec. 31 to find international consensus on stabilising Iraq. This would lead to an Iraq International Support Group, including all neighbours, the UN and big international players. Incentives the US can offer to Syria and Iran were set out: a stable Iraq, a continued US role in Afghanistan, access to international organisations including the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the prospect for enhanced diplomatic relations with the US, and a US policy that emphasises political and economic reforms, not "regime change".

The thorny issue of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme should be left to the UN, the report recommends. Syria is told to co-operate fully with investigations into the political assassinations in Lebanon, cease aid to Hizbullah, help release Israeli prisoners, and stop undermining the Lebanese government. In turn, peace with Israel would result in the return of the occupied Golan Heights, with an international border force and US troops if requested by both sides.

Even Baker is not sure such overtures will work. Although Iran gave what he called important help to the US in Afghanistan, his discussions with Iranians did not give a sense that "Iran is champing at the bit to come to the table with us to talk about Iraq". Syria, however, gave "strong indications" it would help if the US entered into a "constructive dialogue".

Hamilton called Iran the national power with the single greatest influence in Iraq. Although it was not clear whether he was including the US in his equation, the report contributed to a growing sense in Washington of waning US influence and options in the region.

The ISG placed much of the burden for stemming the bloodshed in Iraq and facilitating a US withdrawal on the beleaguered government of Maliki. Though the report highlights the crucial role of neighbours in stabilising Iraq, its call for the US to make its support for the government conditional on the achievement of "milestones" puts Baghdad on the spot.

Iraqi officials have been playing down the impact of the report in recent days. But despite repeated assurances of support from President Bush, the recommendations are likely to increase pressure on the Iraqi government and reinforce perceptions of growing disillusionment with its performance. The report says Iraq has a democratically elected government but it is not "adequately advancing national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services".

The ISG called on the administration to work closely with Iraqi leaders to achieve certain benchmarks on the three main fronts: national reconciliation, security and governance. It considered a list of milestones that had already been put forward by Maliki "a good start" but said it must be expanded to include benchmarks "that can strengthen the government and benefit the Iraqi people". Bush and his team had to convey a clear message, said the report. If Iraq fails to meet the objectives set, then "the US should reduce its political, military or economic support for the Iraqi government".

Iraqi officials will welcome the call for an acceleration of security responsibility - which the report said should be achieved by increasing the number and quality of Iraqi army brigades - and the assertion that the primary mission of US forces should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army. Indeed officials say Maliki last week won commitment from President Bush on an accelerated transfer of military authority. But the report also warns that the US will not wait for ever for Iraqi forces to be ready, saying: "The US must make it clear to the Iraqi government that the US could carry out its plans, including planned redeployments, even if the Iraqi government did not implement their planned changes".

The pressure for the involvement of neighbours to stabilise Iraq will be received with some caution in Baghdad. Government officials say it is the Iraqi government, rather than the US, which should be engaging Damascus and Tehran. In an apparent attempt to pre-empt the report, Maliki on Dec. 5 announced that he was sending envoys to neighbouring countries to improve security co-operation and that he would call for a conference of states in the region.

As the debate over engagement with Syria and Iran has gained momentum in Washington in recent weeks, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Tehran, where he called on the Shi'ite theocracy to back the central government rather than competing Shi'ite groups. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mu'allem held rare talks in Baghdad recently.

Arab officials on Dec. 7 seized on the ISG recommendations to highlight the need for greater US commitment to a revived peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. But there was concern in some Arab states that any early scale-back of the American troop presence in Iraq could lead to an escalation in sectarian conflict that might spill over into neighbouring states. Syria welcomed the recommendation, saying it was pleased that the report tied the situation in Iraq with the rest of the region. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran would be "in the position of [providing] help" if Washington found "a good end for the Iraq crisis". But he reiterated Tehran's position that US troops should leave.

While some in Tehran fear the dangers for Iran of growing violence in Iraq, others say it has no pressing reason to ease the US plight. Ali Larijani, the top security official, said the US was at a "strategic dead-end" in Iraq and the wider Middle East. The FT quoted an official as saying Iran could "live with" any likely scenario in Iraq, "including riots, federalism, popular government or disintegration", adding: "A mess in Iraq means Iran would not be next [to be invaded by the US], while security and democracy in Iraq would mean Iran's friends were in power, whether in a unified Iraq or a federal one. Iran is now strong in the region, and has won the game in Iraq".

Any signs of Iranian triumphalism are likely to add to fears within Arab states of spreading Iranian and radical influence in the region.

Some commentators sniffed a sense of US defeatism in the Baker-Hamilton report. Abdel Monem Said, the director of al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said this idea could be seized on by militant Islamists in the region and likened the situation to that prior to the US withdrawal from Vietnam in the early 1970s. He questioned what incentives the US would be able to use to draw the Iranians and Syrians into constructive dialogue, saying: "We are coming back to 1974 once more, when the US was internationally demoralised and got out of South-East Asia and for the next seven to eight years we got a Communist sweep into Vietnam, into Laos, into Cambodia".

Lebanese officials welcomed calls for greater US effort to pursue peace between Israel and the Arabs. But one senior Beirut official said Lebanon should not become a pawn in negotiations with neighbouring Syria and should not "be made the reward for Syria's good behaviour".

There was little immediate prospect in any case of an advance on the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected links between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq and ruled out talks with Syria.

Some Iraqis themselves doubted that changes in US policy could make much difference. The FT quoted "Hussein, a Shia teacher in Baghdad", as saying: "The situation is a hurricane: no one has the power to calm it, not Americans and not Iraqis".

The government said the ISG recommendations were in line with its own plans to stop the rampant violence, but cautioned that there was no "magic wand" to solve the country's problems. Talking to the pan-Arab satellite TV channel Al Arabiya, Deputy PM Barham Saleh said: "The situation is grave, very grave in fact, and cannot be tolerated. Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible. The focus must be on boosting the Iraqi security forces". But he warned that improving the battlefield capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces would not be "the magic wand that brings a solution in one day".

Prominent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othman criticised the ISG for failing to include any Iraqi, calling its recommendations "superficial and inaccurate". He said: "I think this report was written in the first place to generate agreement among the Americans themselves and to find co-operation between the Democrats and the Republicans in order to achieve US interests. The absence of an Iraqi representative on the panel is a shortcoming. It seems those who wrote it have little knowledge about the situation in Iraq. They only visited the Green Zone for some days, they did not go to the south or to Kurdistan to ask the people there. This is the reason why their outcome and recommendations are superficial and inaccurate".

On the streets of Baghdad, scepticism seemed widespread. The Associated Press on Dec. 8 quoted Khalid Abdel-Rahim, 42, a Sunni Arab employee of the Ministry of Industry, as saying: "This report is no different than others we have received from national unity conferences or regional conferences in the last three years, ones that came up with nice words that had no effect. US officials have long discussed training more Iraqi troops, but they have not been able to control widespread attacks by insurgents and militias. I don't expect this latest report will solve our problems".

AP quoted Hadi Muhsin, 50, a Shi'ite "who owns a stationery shop in Baghdad", as saying: "This report comes after the deaths of tens thousands of Iraqis. It doesn't recommend the total withdrawal of US forces or set a timetable. I don't think this report will bring positive change. We don't even know if President Bush will follow it".

Sadeq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to PM Maliki, echoed Saleh's comment that the report's recommendations were "positive on the whole". He said they conformed with the government's own plans to deal with the rampant violence engulfing the country since 2003, adding: "The parts I read were very positive".

A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a Sunni Arab group suspected of links to the insurgency, sharply criticised the report and cast doubt on whether one of its major recommendations - training and equipping more Iraqi security forces - could produce results. Speaking on al-Jazeera TV, the spokesman, Shaikh Muhammad Bashar al-Fayadh, said the recommendations in their entirety gave precedence to US interests over Iraq's and sought "guarantees for an exit but without paying heed to preventing a civil war from breaking out". He added: "The report recommends the training of Iraqi forces, but will it reach the level of the US Army? The answer is 'no'. If the American Army is unable to settle the question and get out of this predicament, so how can that be?"

Reaction varied among other Iraqi politicians, who expressed appreciation, anger and ambivalence at sections of the report. Much depended on whether the study's 79 points seemed to support each ethnic or sectarian group's interests. Kurdish leaders were outraged by proposals that could weaken Kurdish autonomy by delaying an opportunity for the Kurds to govern the contested oil city of Kirkuk, and by giving the central government control over all oil revenues.

Sunni Arab MPs said they had wanted the main points of the report to push for a cleansing of Shi'ite chauvinist elements from the government and security forces. Dhafer al-Ani, a conservative Sunni MP, said: "These recommendations might be a solution for the American crisis in Iraq, but not a solution for the Iraqi crisis. The withdrawal of the American forces at a time when the Iraqi forces are still poorly trained is bad".

Some of the report's proposals are clearly intended to assuage the fears of Sunni Arabs, such as a recommendation that the Americans try to shift control of the elite police units, suspected of being rife with Shi'ite militiamen, to the Sunni-led Defence Ministry from the Shi'ite-led Interior Ministry. But Shi'ite leaders would almost certainly balk at any such move.

Another Sunni Arab MP, Salim Abdullah, said the report placed too much emphasis on training Iraqi forces and not enough on monitoring those forces for sectarian loyalties, adding: "We think that improving the Iraqi troops will not be achieved through training only. Corrupt individuals should be removed. The militias should be dealt with, and the security forces should be shielded from political influence".