United States President George Bush will unveil his new strategy for Iraq in a prime-time speech to the nation on Wednesday at 9pm local time, the White House said on Monday.
“The president will be addressing the nation on his plan for a way forward in Iraq and the global war on terror,” spokesperson Tony Snow said, adding that the White House had requested air time from major US television networks.
“They did not disagree. They noted the request,” the spokesperson told reporters.
Earlier, Snow declined to confirm news reports that the new strategy for fighting the unpopular war, in which more than 3Â 000 US soldiers have died, would aim to impose a set of political, economic and security “benchmarks” for Iraq’s government to meet.
The New York Times, citing unnamed senior Bush aides, said the plan would seek to draw more of Iraq’s minority Sunnis into the political process, finalising a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and easing restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party.
Without saying what the specific penalties for failing to achieve the goals would be, US officials insisted that they intended to hold the Iraqis to a realistic timetable for action, the report said.
“This is not an open-ended commitment,” the newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying. “We are putting real, specific requirements and expectations on the Iraqi government.”
The Americans and Iraqis have agreed on many of the objectives before, only to fall far short, the New York Times noted.
Several US news outlets have reported that Bush’s plan is expected to include a push to increase the US troop presence in Iraq by 20Â 000 soldiers.
Administration officials plan to make the benchmarks public sometime after the address, the paper said. — AFP