By Aseel Kami and Ross Colvin2 hours, 56 minutes ago
"Slow as a turtle" was how one Iraqi lawmaker on Tuesday described Iraq's faltering progress in meeting political benchmarks set by Washington to encourage national reconciliation and end sectarian violence.
Washington has dispatched a succession of officials to press Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government to speed up passage of laws aimed at drawing disaffected minority Sunni Arabs more firmly into the political process.
The latest was Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who met Maliki on Tuesday to discuss the status of an oil revenue-sharing law, constitutional reforms, a law ending a ban on former Baathists holding public office and provincial polls.
Negroponte followed the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, who held similar talks with Maliki on Sunday and, according to a New York Times reporter who sat in on the meeting, urged the prime minister to make measurable political progress by next month.
Despite opposition in Congress, U.S. President George Bush has sent nearly 30,000 extra troops to Iraq to help curb sectarian violence and give Maliki's government breathing room to achieve a political accommodation between the warring sides.
The strategy has been costly in the lives of U.S. soldiers, 127 were killed in May alone, and there is little to show for it -- the political blocs have made little headway in breaking the logjam holding up agreement on the laws.
Bush is scheduled to deliver an interim report on developments in Iraq in July. The top U.S. general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to give their own assessment of the success of the new military strategy in September.
RELUCTANCE TO COMPROMISE
But analysts say Maliki's fractious coalition government of Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs is too weak and divided to make the necessary compromises without external pressure.
International Crisis Group analyst, Joost Hiltermann, who closely watches developments in Iraq, said he expected to see "little bits of progress that will be sold as real progress."
"The Kurds have everything they want and don't want to concede anything, Shi'ites don't want to be cheated out of their control of the state apparatus, and Sunnis obviously want the benchmarks to be met because they favor them but cannot make it happen because they are in the minority," he said.
A draft hydrocarbon law, crucial to regulating how wealth from Iraq's huge oil reserves will be shared by its sectarian and ethnic groups, has been approved by cabinet but faces opposition from Kurds over who will control the oilfields.
Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Kurdish Alliance in parliament, said the political blocs were trying to reach a compromise on the law, but progress was achingly slow.
"They are discussing it, but the process is slow as a turtle," he told Reuters.
A draft de-Baathification law has been agreed by Maliki and President Jalal Talabani and sent to cabinet for debate. But it faces stiff opposition and other drafts are now circulating.
After six months of talks, parliament's constitutional reform committee has failed to reach agreement on amending key provisions of the constitution. A law setting a date for provincial elections has also yet to be agreed by cabinet.