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Just out from the White House:
Vice President Biden has arrived in Iraq to visit U.S. troops and to meet with Iraqi leaders, including President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Speaker of the Council of Representatives Ayad al-Samarrai. The Vice President will reiterate the United States’ commitment to fully implement the Security Agreement and the Strategic Framework Agreement and to carry out President Obama’s plan to draw down U.S. forces. He will discuss with Iraq’s leaders the importance of achieving the political progress that is necessary to ensure the nation’s long-term stability. This is Vice President Biden’s second trip to Iraq this year and his first as Vice President.
Biden has long experience dealing with and strategizing over Iraq’s sectarian political deadlocks. The trouble is that non-Kurdish Iraqis consider his major proposal for an Iraqi political compact — a plan to decentralize Iraq to the point of creating significant regional autonomy — to be offensive. Juan Cole had a good roundup of this last year when President Obama tapped Biden for the VP slot. Clearly, the Iraqis will deal with Biden with the respect due a high-level American emissary, but it would be interesting to see whether there’s any sub-rosa animosity toward someone they once regarded as trying to break up their country.
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