Bush to ask additional $ 100 bln for Iraq, Afghanistan

Washington, Feb 3 (UNI) President Bush proposes to ask Congress an additional 100 billion dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan this year, even as a new US intelligence estimate (NIE) predicts further deterioration in the chaotic situation in Iraq if the warring sectarian factions fail to reach a compromise.

The NIE, a summary which was made public yesterday, says that the current political climate makes such reconciliation difficult.

According to official sources, the White House will forward its formal request to Congress on Monday. The 100 billion dollars comes on top of 70 billion dollars already approved by Congress for this fiscal year. The 2008 request is for 145 billion dollars.

The NIE says that even if violence does recede in that period, animosities between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim groups make reconciliation difficult for Iraqi political leaders. Iraqi forces will be 'hard-pressed' to execute increased responsibilities for security, particularly in reining in Shi'ite militias, it says.

The NIE is the first such report on Iraq in two and half years. An NIE represents the highest collective judgment of the 16 agencies that make up the US intelligence community.

Although it did not call the Iraq conflict a civil war, the NIE did acknowledge that ''the term civil war accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilisation, and population displacements.'' The NIE says ''if coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.'' At a special White House briefing, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley agreed that the NIE supports the Bush administration's new strategy, announced January 10, to enhance security in Iraq by sending an additional 21,500 US combat troops for operations in Baghdad and al-Anbar province.

Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in a statement last night said, ''the document underscores the need for a political solution in Iraq that involves all key stakeholders, both within the country and in the region.

Rather than the troop escalation the Administration has planned, we must step up our diplomatic efforts to bring the bloodshed to an end.'' He says the report explicitly notes 'the absence of unifying leaders' in Iraq and identifies 'stronger Iraqi leadership' as a 'key enabler' for progress.

''In short, this document cries out for a more enlightened approach. In conjunction with recent reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, it strongly suggests the need for a far more integrated diplomatic, political, economic and military strategy than what the President has so far offered us,'' Lantos said.

UNI