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Bush denies civil war threat in Iraq

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 18:34 CST

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, hit by polls showing America's support for the Iraq war at an all-time low, denied on Tuesday Iraq was sliding into civil war, despite the worst sectarian strife since a U.S.-led invasion.

The decline in Bush's public approval ratings came as he told Iraqis they faced a choice between "chaos or unity" amid violence that has dented U.S. hopes for the stability needed to pave the way for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

At least 60 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in the latest in a series of deadly attacks following the bombing of a major Shi'ite mosque last week.

Asked what Washington would do if civil war broke out in Iraq, Bush told ABC News: "I don't buy your premise that there's going to be a civil war."

He said he had spoken to leaders of all Iraqi sects and "I heard loud and clear that they understand that they're going to choose unification, and we're going to help them do so."

Despite that, sectarian bloodshed has complicated efforts to forge a new unity government.

At home, pessimism over Iraq, and Bush's support -- despite bipartisan objections -- for letting a state-owned Arab company take over operations at six U.S. ports, appeared to be major factors driving his job performance rating down to 34 percent.

They were the lowest CBS News poll numbers of his presidency and create a grim picture in a midterm election year.

The same poll showed public approval for Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, once among his strongest suits, falling to 30 percent from 37 percent in January.

Sixty-two percent of Americans said they thought U.S. efforts to bring order to Iraq were going badly, up from 54 percent in January, compared with 36 percent who said things were going well, a drop from 45 percent.

U.S. TROOPS WANT OUT

Raising questions about Bush's vow to keep troops in Iraq as long as they are needed, a Le Moyne College/Zogby poll showed 72 percent of U.S troops serving there think the United States should exit within the next year. Nearly one in four said the troops should leave immediately.

A strategy often used by the Bush administration against opponents of the war in Iraq has been to accuse them of being unfair to troops who want to stay until they get the job done.

But Americans' opposition to the war has grown as U.S. casualties have mounted and violence has persisted despite a costly program to train Iraqi police and soldiers. There have been 2,295 U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003.

Before leaving on a trip to India and Pakistan, Bush skirted a reporter's question of whether the latest Iraqi violence would affect prospects for beginning a drawdown of the 136,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq.

"The people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice," Bush said after a White House meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "The choice is a free society, or a society dictated ... by evil people who will kill innocents."

Administration officials have accused Sunni-led insurgents, including al Qaeda operatives, of trying to foment civil war in Iraq. In Washington, a U.S. military intelligence chief called the situation "very tenuous" but not yet civil war.

Seated next to Bush, Berlusconi said he stood by his plan to withdraw all of Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

"This plan has been agreed upon also together with our allies, and with the Iraqi government," Berlusconi, one of Bush's staunchest allies on Iraq, told reporters.

Source: REUTERS

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