Bush, Iraqi leader reject withdrawal timetable

updated 9:00 p.m. ET June 24, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush assured Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Friday “there are not going to be any timetables” for withdrawal of American forces and vowed victory over insurgents attempting to prevent establishment of a democratic government.

“This is not the time to fall back,” al-Jaafari concurred at a joint news conference at the White House.

Fielding questions hours after the latest attack on a U.S. military convoy left five Marines and a Navy sailor dead, Bush conceded that it bothers Americans to see scenes of carnage on television.

Speaking of the insurgents, he said, “There’s no question there’s an enemy that still wants to shake our will and get us to leave. ... They try to kill and they do kill innocent Iraqi people, women and children ’cause they know that the carnage that they reap will be on TV and they know that it bothers people to see death.”

“It does. It bothers me. It bothers American citizens. It bothers Iraqis,” Bush said.

Constitution goal
During their meeting, Bush and al-Jaafari talked about work being done to train Iraqi security forces — a precursor to bringing U.S. troops home — as well as efforts to draft a constitution and rebuild a nation still wracked by a violent insurgency more than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Al-Jaafari confidently predicted Thursday that a constitution to guide his country toward democracy would be concluded by the end of August and then ratified in a popular referendum.

“We are going to do it within two months,” al-Jaafari said as he inspected the U.S. Constitution in the dimly lit, cool rotunda of the National Archives. Asked if it would be approved by the Iraqi people in the fall, he replied, “Yes.”

In the meantime, the U.S.-led multinational force must stay in Iraq until Iraqi forces are fully prepared to defend the country by themselves, al-Jaafari said.

Setting of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces would be a sign of weakness, he said. “The country would be open to increased terrorist activity,” he told the private Council on Foreign Relations.

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