Bush and Maliki to Discuss Iraqi Security

President George Bush is to make an unexpected stopover in Amman next week to discuss Iraq's security crisis with the country's embattled prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.

Despite public declarations of harmony, the two governments have had several disputes in recent weeks. They even prompted Mr Maliki to ask Mr Bush, during a phone call last month, whether Washington planned to remove him.

The growing sectarian conflict in Iraq, and the effect it is having on American public opinion, have led some US officials to describe Mr Maliki as even less effective than his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari, whom the Americans helped to unseat last April.

The US is unhappy with Mr Maliki's failure to rein in the Shia militias, who have infiltrated the police. They also deplore his unwillingness to produce a timetable for Iraqi army divisions to start taking over responsibility from US forces for protecting Baghdad. Last month Mr Maliki publicly challenged statements by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Iraq, that the two governments were in agreement on a transfer of security tasks.

Mt Bush will fly to Jordan on Wednesday from a Nato summit in Latvia. White House officials today told reporters on the plane back to Washington after the President's Asian tour that the Amman stopover had been under discussion for more than a week. But observers speculated it had partly been prompted by Iran's invitation to Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and Syria's president, Bashar Assad, to visit Tehran this weekend for talks on Iraq.

The initiative seemed to upstage Washington, which has no face-to-face contacts with Iran, giving the impression that the US was being sidelined even by its allies in Baghdad. The Bush-Maliki talks will allow the US president to counter that view. US national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the talks were part of a process allowing Mr Bush to hear from various sources as he tries to "make up his mind about how the best way is to proceed in Iraq".

He is not expected to announce any changes in strategy until he has also been given the results of the Pentagon's review of Iraq options as well as those of the bipartisan study group led by James Baker.

The scale of Iraq's catastrophe was highlighted when the UN's mission in Iraq announced its latest bimonthly survey of human rights today. Some 7,054 civilians died in September and October from bombings and assassinations, around 450 more than in July and August. The death toll for October made it the worst single month since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Baghdad was the centre of the violence. It suffered over two-thirds of Iraq's deaths, mainly from gunshot wounds. The UN blamed a combination of terrorist, militia, and insurgent activity for the violence, which was also exploited by criminal gangs.

"Freedom of expression continued to be undermined, minorities continued to be adversely affected, women's conditions continued to deteriorate, the targeting of professionals, such as journalists, teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other intellectuals, political, tribal and religious leaders, Governments officials and members of the security forces continued unabated. Violence is impacting education, preventing many schools and universities from opening," the UN report said.