Few details offered
Khalilzad said the Iraqi government had agreed by the end of the year to develop a timeline for progress. At the same time, he declared, the United States needed to redouble its efforts to succeed in Iraq.
“Iraq leaders have agreed to a timeline for making the hard decisions needed to resolve these issues,” Khalilzad said. “Iraqi leaders must step up to achieve key political and security milestones on which they’ve agreed.”
Details of the milestones were not spelled out, but Khalilzad mentioned several areas in which progress would be measured, including devising a system to share the country’s oil wealth among all religious and ethnic groups.
His comments came a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. government and military officials were working with Iraq to set broad time frames for when Iraqis can take over 16 provinces that are still under the control of U.S. troops. He said officials were not talking about penalizing the Iraqis if they don’t hit certain benchmarks.
