‘Nothing less than victory’

12:48 p.m.

RIGA, Latvia (AP) — President Bush said today he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”

A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, Indiana Democrat, plans to present ideas to Mr. Bush next month.

The panel is expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.

The midterm elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. troops need to come home. But Mr. Bush has resisted that, even while projecting the need for a different approach.

“We’ll continue to be flexible and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed,” the president said.

Mr. Bush pushed back against skeptics of his goal of spreading freedom across the Middle East. “I understand these doubts but I do not share them,” he said.

In Riga to attend a NATO summit, Mr. Bush also enlisted renewed commitments from the NATO allies that have deployed 32,000 troops to Afghanistan.

He said NATO commanders must have the resources and flexibility to do the job, an apparent reference to the fact that only a handful of countries — primarily Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands — are doing much of the heavy lifting in the dangerous southern provinces against a resurgent Taliban.

“Defeating them will require the full commitment of our alliance,” Mr. Bush said.

The countries fighting in the south want others, such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, that are operating in more secure northern areas, to reduce restrictions on their forces to give NATO commanders more flexibility to use them where they’re most needed.

Mr. Bush said he hoped the alliance will be able to offer membership to Croatia, Macedonia and Albania in 2008.

Speaking from Russia’s doorstep in a former Soviet republic, he also reiterated U.S. support for future NATO membership for Georgia, as well as Ukraine if it makes the necessary democratic reforms.

“The United States believes in NATO membership for all of Europe’s democracies that seek it,” Mr. Bush said.

Earlier today, the president blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al Qaeda plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, hosting the Bush-al-Maliki summit, has warned that the new year could dawn with three civil wars in the Mideast — with one in Iraq added to those already ongoing in Lebanon and between the Palestinians and Israelis. The country is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began in March 2003.

Mr. Bush, dodging a direct answer of whether a civil war exist, tied the three conflicts together in a different way. He said recent strife in Lebanon and the heated up Israeli-Palestinian dispute are, like Iraq, the result of extremists trying to choke off democratic progress.

“No question it’s tough, no question about it,” Mr. Bush said at a press conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal.”

The president said he will ask Mr. al-Maliki to explain his plan for quelling the violence.

“The Maliki government is going to have to deal with that violence and we want to help them do so,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s in our interest that we succeed.”

Directly seeking help from Iran and Syria with Iraq, as part of new, aggressive diplomacy throughout the region, is expected to be among the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton group.

But Mr. Bush repeated his administration’s reluctance to talk with two nations it regards as pariah states working to destabilize the Middle East.

Iran, the top U.S. rival in the region, has reached out to Iraq and Syria in recent days — an attempt viewed as a bid to assert its role as a power broker in Iraq.

The president said Iraq is a sovereign nation, free to meet with its neighbors. “If that’s what they think they ought to do, that’s fine,” he said. “One thing Iraq would like to see is for the Iranians to leave them alone.”

The president added that the U.S. will only deal with Iran when they suspend their program of enriching uranium, which could be used in a nuclear weapon arsenal.

“The Iranians and the Syrians should help — not destabilize — this young democracy,” he said.

Iran’s state-run television, however, quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying “we are in dire need of Iran’s help in establishing security and stability in Iraq.” The comments came after Mr. Talabani met yesterday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.