WE'RE JUST MONTHS AWAY FROM HILLARY PLAYING UP HER VOTE FOR THE WAR:

UN chief flies into Iraq for talks (Guardian Unlimited, 3/22/07)

Mr Ban, formerly South Korea's foreign minister, took over from Kofi Annan in the UN top post in January. It is his first visit to Iraq.

Mr Annan last visited Baghdad in November 2005, just ahead of the country's parliamentary elections.

Last week, Mr Ban unveiled the "international compact with Iraq" in which he appealed for international support for a five-year Iraq reconstruction plan, calling it "a tool for unlocking Iraq's own potential".

His visit came as a senior Iraqi official said the country's government is holding talks with Sunni insurgent groups in a bid to persuade them to lay down their arms.

Saad Yousif al-Muttalibi, of the Ministry of National Dialogue and Reconciliation, said the talks were initiated at the request of the insurgents and have been taking place inside and outside Iraq for the last three months.

He refused to identify the groups, but said they did not include al-Qaida in Iraq or Saddam Hussein loyalists. Members of the former president's Ba'ath party did, however, take part, he added.

Mr al-Muttalibi said negotiations were deadlocked over the insurgent groups' insistence that they would lay down their arms only when a timetable for the withdrawal of US-led coalition troops in Iraq is announced.

The government's response was that such a move could only be taken when security is restored.

Mr al-Muttalibi's comments came one day after he expressed optimism in an interview with the BBC that the Iraqi government was making progress in talks with insurgent groups, predicting some factions might be close to laying down their arms. "One of the aims is to join with them in the fight against al-Qaida [in Iraq]," he told the BBC.

In a separate BBC interview yesterday, Iraq's vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi, called for talks with every insurgent group except al-Qaida.

Democrats hung themselves out to dry when they gave up on defeating the USSR--you'd think they'd have learned from the experience. We are quite secondary to the End of History.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 22, 2007 7:15 AM