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Biden in Iraq to help break political logjam

Arab-Kurd tensions and rules for new Iraqi elections were among items on his agenda.

BAGHDAD - Amid a brief rumble of mortar fire, Vice President Biden arrived here yesterday for meetings with U.S. and Iraqi officials at a time when many Iraqis are pushing for a quick U.S. departure after more than six years of war.

Touching down in a C-17 cargo plane in a hot dusk, Biden then made his way by helicopter to the enormous new U.S. Embassy, where he met Gen. Ray Odierno and Ambassador Christopher Hill, the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials here.

In brief remarks afterward, Biden said he was here as an "interlocutor" to help Iraqi leaders resolve a number of pressing political issues, chief among them reaching agreement on a law establishing rules for the scheduled January general election.

"They are ultimately all Iraqi decisions," Biden said.

Biden is running point on Iraq in the Obama administration, and this visit is his second in two months.

As he met with U.S. officials in the Green Zone, the fortified area where Iraqi ministries and the U.S. Embassy sit, the shudder of nearby mortar fire disturbed the warm night. Warnings to take cover sounded through the compound. Biden was unhurt.

One round hit residential apartments on the Tigris River, killing two people and wounding five, including a 12-year-old, a police official said, according to the Associated Press.

The Obama administration is on a glide path toward departing Iraq by the end of 2011. U.S. troops already have left major urban areas to the protection of Iraqi security forces, whose ability to maintain peace is uncertain.

The challenge for U.S. diplomatic and military officials now is managing the withdrawal to ensure that it does not destabilize the country's still-halting political process or leave security vacuums where violence could resume.

There are roughly 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and many of them will remain in place through the scheduled January general elections.

A rapid withdrawal will begin immediately afterward to meet the August 2010 withdrawal deadline for U.S. combat troops agreed to by the Obama administration and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim now seeking new alliances across sectarian lines.

Despite an impending request for more troops for Afghanistan, Odierno said he had "not received one phone call" from anyone in the Obama administration urging him to change his withdrawal calculus or to free up soldiers faster for the other conflict.

"We have an opportunity here," said Odierno, suggesting that an overly hasty departure could jeopardize that. "We have an opportunity to have a long-term strategic partnership with a government in a key region."

U.S. officials said the Iraqi parliament needed to pass an elections law by the end of October in order for the vote to take place on time, and the issue is certain to be central to Biden's agenda here.

"I think the Iraqis have clearly embraced politics," Hill said. "The question is whether it will be a politics with rules of the road."

Biden made his last visit to the country on July 4 to spend Independence Day with the troops. During that trip he also met with his son Beau, who is an Army captain serving in Iraq.

Since that visit, Iraq's government has set in motion a proposed referendum on the status of U.S. forces, which if passed could move up by a year the 2011 withdrawal deadline for all U.S. troops.

Biden said that while Iraqi officials had told him the referendum was likely to go forward early next year, "a number of steps still need to be taken."

Biden plans to spend today in meetings with Iraq's political leadership, many of them Sunnis and Shiites who make up the government's senior ranks. Then tomorrow he will meet Kurdish officials.

U.S. diplomatic and military officials are concerned over unresolved territorial claims along the internal boundary separating Arab Iraq from the Kurdish autonomous area in the north.

A U.N. mediation process is addressing 15 disputes, and Hill said U.S. diplomacy was supporting that effort.

Odierno said Biden was likely to address the issue, which threatens violent conflict between Arabs and Kurds, but not to offer specific solutions.