Iraq wants pullout in 2010

Sen. Barack Obama met with Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq's once-troubled Anbar province on Tuesday before heading for Amman, Jordan, where he told reporters that Iraqis now needs to resolve their political differences.

"There is security progress, but now we need a political solution," Obama said at his first news conference since he began his six-nation world tour over the weekend.

On Monday, Obama received a fresh boost to his troop withdrawal plan from the Iraqi government, which affirmed that it shares Obama's goal of pulling US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2010.

At the start of a two-day visit to Iraq aimed at burnishing his foreign policy credentials, Obama was given a red-carpet reception by a newly assertive Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has only recently started calling for a troop withdrawal timetable—to the dismay of the White House, and potentially to the detriment of Obama's rival, Sen. John McCain.

Maliki told Obama he hopes the troops will go home "by the end of 2010," according to Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, marking the first time the Iraqi government has specified a time limit on the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq.

One possibility is that Maliki is seeking to leverage Obama's withdrawal plan to extract concessions from the Bush administration in negotiations for a formal agreement governing the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

But a statement issued by Obama's congressional delegation, including Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), said that Maliki is now serious about demanding a time frame for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"Iraqis want an aspirational timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat forces," the statement said. "Prime Minister Maliki told us that while the Iraqi people deeply appreciate the sacrifices of American soldiers, they do not want an open-ended presence of U.S. combat forces."

Dabbagh had on Sunday denied that Maliki had endorsed Obama's withdrawal proposal in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. But his remarks Monday indicate that Iraq's position on a withdrawal time frame does at least closely coincide with Obama's.

Under Obama's proposal, U.S. combat troops would be gone by May 2010.