Weary Iraqis await Bush's way forward in violence-hit nation

Baghdad: US troops in Iraq are expected to increase by 20,000 under a plan to be unveiled by George W. Bush later yesterday but Iraqis are sceptical the president's new way forward will end the incessant violence in Baghdad.

Administration officials said Bush will propose deploying about 20,000 extra troops to join around 130,000 in Iraq. Most will go to Baghdad and 4,000 to the volatile Anbar province.

US commanders in Iraq have said the key to the success of Bush's revamped strategy is easing sectarian and insurgent violence in the capital where one out of four Iraqis live.

Streets were quiet in a Sunni insurgent bastion in Baghdad after US and Iraqi forces, backed by fighter jets and helicopters, killed 50 people on Tuesday in a major battle that may be part of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's pledge to crush militants, regardless of their sect.

Bush was to make his address in the White House at 9pm (0200 GMT today). Iraqis weary of sectarian death squads and insurgent bombs nearly four years after the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussain voiced scepticism that more troops would improve their lives.

Control

"The new strategies that they are talking about are not going to solve any problem, only the people of this country will manage to solve this problem," Falah Mehdi, a Baghdad resident, told Reuters.

Bush administration officials said he will call for security of all Iraqi provinces to be turned over by Nov-ember but they said this did not represent a timetable for a US pullout. Iraqis currently control only six of 18 provinces.

A US defence official said Bush would announce an increase in the training of Iraqi security forces through a programme in which US trainers live and work within an Iraqi unit.

Democrats in control of the US Congress vowed they would fight what they called an escalation of the war, in which more than 3,000 US servicemen and women have died as well as tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Bush is expected to couple his troop announcement with a new call for Iraq's government to meet political milestones aimed at ending sectarian violence, including an oil-revenue sharing plan, constitutional reform and allowing former members of Saddam Hussain's Baath party to return to public life.

Disarming militants

Iraq's national security adviser said yesterday the country's most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, had given his blessing to government efforts to disarm militants.

US commanders and Iraq's once dominant Sunni minority have made clear they want any crackdown to include not just Sunni rebels but militias loyal to powerful Shiites.