WASHINGTON, April 15 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will have crucial talks in the White House Friday against the backdrop of escalating violence in Iraq and a new attempt by al-Qaida to drive a wedge between Washington and its coalition partners in Iraq's year-old occupation.
The prime minister, Bush's staunchest ally in the invasion of Iraq and in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq, will likely attempt to move the U.S. administration to give the United Nations a stronger role in the country, short of its handpicking an interim government come June 30.
Bush and Blair also need to shore up Washington's so-called coalition of the willing, a member of which has already announced its withdrawal from Iraq following an election upset sparked by terrorist bombings in retaliation for its stand with Washington.
"Blair is a critical figure in terms of holding the coalition together," Nile Gardner, a fellow in Anglo-American security policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told United Press International. "Blair, I think was a central figure in the creation of the coalition of the willing and he remains a central figure in the coalition on the ground in Iraq."
More than 20 European nations, in addition to Britain, have a troop presence in Iraq, ranging from 25 from Kazakhstan to 3,000 from Italy. Britain, at about 10,000 soldiers, has the largest contingent of forces after the United States, which has about 135,000 in country.
There are rumblings that some foreign officials are discontent over what they see as a lack of input in the decision making on the occupation despite their participation in it.
Spain has the fifth-largest contingent after the United States and shook the coalition when its new socialist government announced it was pulling out of Iraq after the planned June 30 sovereignty handover by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi government.
Although the previous prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, was not running for re-election, his party was widely predicted to stay in power despite public disapproval of its alliance with Washington until about 200 people were killed in several simultaneous bombings in Madrid by Islamist terrorists.
Many other leaders of European nations now participating in the Iraq effort have done so despite heavy public outcry at home, putting their own political futures at risk.
On Thursday, Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaida terrorist network blamed for the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, appeared to make a bid to exacerbate fears the coalition may fray as Iraqi insurgents pick up the pace of fighting against coalition forces and begin to kidnap civilian workers.
European nations participating in the occupation of Iraq or maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan -- the first major battleground of the war against terror -- would enjoy a truce and not be subject to terrorist attack if their troops were withdrawn, according to a recording of bin Laden broadcast Thursday.
"After conducting a technical analysis, the Central Intelligence Agency assesses that the voice on the audiotape, which aired today on Arab television, is likely that of Osama bin Laden," a CIA official said. "It appears to be an attempt by bin Laden/al-Qaida to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States."
Italy, Britain and other countries publicly rejected the offer, but the determination by others may not be so strong, at least in the long run.
"Bin Laden has learned form his success in Spain that you can intimidate European populations and he is feeding on the resentment of many Europeans against the United States," said Gardner. "And while Europe is being publicly at one in condemning bin Laden's offer, there are many leftists in Europe who would be quite happy to negotiate and who see the war on terror as America's problem."
Washington and Britain have vowed to hand over sovereignty on June 30 to an interim government in a process yet to be decided and to a body still undecided.
U.N. Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is currently in Baghdad at the request of the United States to look at possible ways to bring the transfer of political power about and set a process in motion for a permanent government. However, Brahimi's recommendations, announced in Baghdad, are sure to raise hackles in the White House, which wants a limited, advisory role for the United Nations in Iraqi affairs.
Brahimi, speaking to the media, suggested the United Nations should handpick the interim government's president and prime minister and that technocrats run Cabinet departments. Washington's vision was an interim government formed from the CPA's Iraqi Governing Council, the members of which were appointed in a way to reflect the country's ethnic and religious diversity.
The proposals will be given to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whom Blair visited before traveling to Washington.
The Bush-Blair talks come at a critical time for Bush. More than 70 U.S. troops have been killed in the last two weeks in Iraq in the fiercest fighting since the end of major combat operations in May 2003. North of Baghdad, U.S. forces are trying to root out loyalists of the deposed Saddam Hussein regime, indigenous Sunni Muslim radicals and foreign terrorists.
In Baghdad and the south, U.S. and coalition forces are attempting to quash a rebellion by followers of a radical Shiite cleric and their allies.
Bush Tuesday went on national television to address the uptick in rebellion, which he said was designed to break the United States' will to see through its objective of establishing a free and democratic government and society in Iraq, which would be a model for reform elsewhere in the region.
Bush vowed the United States would stay the course and indicated he would allow the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to increase by 10,000 given the current violence.
Also on the menu for discussion Friday are the Middle East, specifically a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a unilateral, complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and from several settlements in the West Bank to help breathe new life into Bush's stalled peace plan.
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