Sen. Hagel opposes sending more troops to Baghdad

WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a frequent Republican critic of President George W Bush's Iraq policy, said today it was irresponsible and wrong to send more U S troops to Baghdad.

Speaking on the CBS show ''Face the Nation,'' Hagel said pouring more U S troops into Baghdad would not reverse the rising tide of sectarian killing there.

''Where we go from here ... is a cold, hard assessment that Iraq is not going to turn out the way we were promised it would, and that's a fact, not because I say it that's the way it's going,'' he said.

Hagel said there were no longer any good options in Iraq for the United States. He suggested enlisting former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush the elder to convene a regional peace conference.

''It is very wrong to put American troops in a hopeless, winless situation, just keep feeding them in to what's going on. That's irresponsible and that is wrong,'' he said.

On Thursday, the top U S commander in the West Asia, Gen John Abizaid, told a Senate committee sectarian the situation in Baghdad was ''probably as bad as I have seen'' and if the tide was not reversed it was possible Iraq could slide into civil war.

But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' insisted the picture was not so gloomy.

''It is a far better Iraq today despite its many difficulties than an Iraq that relied on repression to resolve differences between their various groups,'' Rice said.

''Iraqis haven't made a choice for civil war. Iraqis have made a choice for unified government that can deliver for all Iraqis,'' she said.

The Bush administration agreed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month to beef up the U S troop presence in Baghdad, where sectarian murders have been running at a rate of 100 or more a day, in an attempt to regain control of the Iraqi capital.

U S troop reinforcements began arriving in Baghdad today with the arrival of the first units of the 172nd Stryker Combat Team from the northern city of Mosul.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month extended the year-long tour of 3,700 troops from the 172nd by four months and redeployed them to Baghdad to try to quell the daily car bombings, shootings and kidnappings.

REUTERS LL RS2209