U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met Iraqi leaders and U.S. military commanders in Baghdad on Monday in a visit overshadowed by the question of when U.S. troops should go home.
U.S. strategy in Iraq and troop levels are central issues in the November election race between the first-term senator from Illinois and Republican candidate John McCain.
Obama, who has made his opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago a centerpiece of his campaign, was in Baghdad to assess security in Iraq, where violence has fallen to its lowest level since early 2004.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Obama did not mention his pledge to remove U.S. combat troops within 16 months if he takes office in talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
But in comments suggesting Iraq and Obama are not far apart on the timeframe, Dabbagh said Baghdad's goal was for foreign combat forces to leave by the end of 2010 if security conditions allowed. Dabbagh has floated a similar timeframe before.
"We cannot give any timetables or dates but the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal of the forces," Dabbagh told reporters.
Obama and the lawmakers traveling with him said in a joint statement that Maliki told them Iraqis do not want the U.S. combat troop presence to be open-ended.
"Iraqis want an aspirational timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat forces," the statement said.
On Sunday, Dabbagh denied Maliki had told a German magazine in an interview that he backed Obama's troop withdrawal timeframe. Dabbagh had said no government statement should be seen as support for either U.S. presidential candidate.
At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino was peppered with questions about the Iraqi position on timeframes.
"Do I believe that they have aspirations to have American troops leave sooner than later? Yes. But I also believe that they know that they're ... not going to put an arbitrary date on it which would not be based on conditions," she said.
Maliki told Obama he did not want foreign troops in Iraq for an undefined period but that conditions on the ground would dictate their withdrawal, the Iraqi leader's office said.
"The prime minister said ... objective circumstances would determine the issue of the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, without leaving this open-end," it said in a statement.
IRAQ VP CAUTIOUS ON WITHDRAWAL
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, said he told Obama that while he agreed with a withdrawal timetable in principle, Iraq's forces needed to be ready. There are more than 140,000 American troops in Iraq.
"What about a security vacuum? What about upgrading the capacity of the Iraqi armed forces? ... We have to look at all these requirements," Hashemi told reporters.
Obama visited Afghanistan over the weekend, the other big foreign policy challenge the next president will face.
He called the situation in Afghanistan "precarious and urgent" and said Washington should start planning to transfer more troops there from Iraq.
McCain has attacked Obama for not visiting Iraq recently to get a close look at conditions. The Republican has been to Iraq eight times while Obama's only other trip was in January 2006.
Obama, who visited Iraq as part of a U.S. congressional delegation, was greeted at Baghdad's airport by General David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in the country. He later held formal talks with Petraeus.
Obama said in an ABC interview that Petraeus gave him a thorough presentation of the situation in Iraq.
"We've made significant progress in terms of reducing violence in Iraq," Obama said. "The question for me was does he consider the gains reversible when it comes to Al Qaeda in Iraq and some of the Shi'ia militias and, if so, what kinds of resources are required to make sure they can't reconstitute themselves."
McCain has criticized Obama for not backing a U.S. troop buildup that has helped cut violence. He said American troops could largely be withdrawn from Iraq -- if conditions on the ground were suitable -- because the war was being won.
"I think they could be largely withdrawn," McCain said in Kennebunkport, Maine, when asked if it was conceivable that U.S. troops could be fully pulled out in about two years.
"And the fact is if we had done what Senator Obama wanted to do, we would have lost and we would have faced a wider war."
U.S. President George W. Bush ordered 30,000 extra troops to Iraq in early 2007 to try to drag the country back from all-out war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
In Washington, Perino also said the United States and Iraq were unlikely to meet a July 31 deadline to complete a new security pact to govern the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, adding it might be ready in the first week in August.
She said the agreement would include an "aspirational date" to transition the mission of American forces.
The sharp cut in violence in Iraq has led Baghdad to become increasingly assertive about its own security capabilities.
Maliki and Bush agreed last week to set a "time horizon" for reducing U.S. forces in Iraq. It was the closest Washington has come to acknowledging the need for a withdrawal timeframe.
Trying to boost his foreign policy credentials, Obama will also travel to other countries in the Middle East and visit major powers in Europe this week.
(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Tim Cocks, Mohammed Abbas in Baghdad and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Editing by Ralph Boulton)
