KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 9, (AP): The United States is open to the idea of keeping troops in Iraq past a deadline to leave next year if Iraq asks for it, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
“We’ll stand by,” Gates said. “We’re ready to have that discussion if and when they want to raise it with us.”
Gates urged Iraq’s squabbling political groups to reconcile after eight months of deadlock. Any request to extend the US military presence in Iraq would have to come from a functioning Iraqi government. It would amend the current agreement under which US troops must leave by the end of 2011.
“That initiative clearly needs to come from the Iraqis; we are open to discussing it,” Gates said. US and Iraqi officials have said for months they expect Iraqi leaders to eventually ask for an extension of the military agreement with the US, but the political impasse has put the idea on hold.
A spike in violence in Iraq over the past two weeks has underscored the continued potency of al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists.

“We have been pretty clear to the Iraqis that what we seek, and hope they will come together on, is an inclusive government that represents all of the major elements of Iraqi society and in a nonsectarian way,” Gates said. “It is our hope that, that is the direction they are moving in.”
He spoke following a meeting with Malaysian Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
Leaders of Iraq’s major political blocs met Monday for the first time since parliamentary elections in March. The 90-minute televised session, the start of three days of talks, did not lead to a breakthrough.
The battle is largely a contest between the Iranian-favored coalition of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr against a Sunni-backed secular coalition led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi.

At stake is whether Iraq has an inclusive government of both the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis, or a Shiite-dominated government with the Sunnis largely in opposition — a recipe that many worry will turn the country back to the sectarian violence of a few years ago.
Al-Maliki’s bloc won 89 seats in the March 7 election, compared with 91 for Allawi’s coalition; neither side won the majority of seats needed to govern.
Gates said he has not spoken directly to any of the political leaders, but other US officials, including Vice-President Joe Biden, have been heavily engaged.
Gates predicted a new government would need some time before asking the US to extend the troop plan.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters clad in black rallied and marched Monday to demand peace and security for Christians in Iraq after dozens were killed in a recent attack on a Baghdad church.
The rally in Detroit coincided with one in Chicago, where hundreds marched through downtown to a plaza in front of the Dirksen Federal Building. Organizers also said rallies were planned in London and Paris.
In Detroit, protesters chanted “Wake up America,” “Stop the genocide” and “We demand peace” as they gathered in front of a federal office building. The downtown rally was organized by members of Michigan’s Chaldean community and other Christians who trace their heritage to the Biblical lands of what is now Iraq.

“The message is this: This massacre is not a one-time event — it’s part of a systematic effort to bring about a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Iraq’s indigenous Christians,” said Wisam Naoum, a rally organizer.
Chaldeans are Iraqi Catholics. Since 2007, thousands of Iraqi Christians have come to the Detroit area, which has one of the nation’s largest communities of people with roots in the Middle East.
Several hundred demonstrators filled the plaza in front of the building and at one point spilled out onto the street. They held signs with messages such as “66 Churches Bombed in Iraq Since ‘03” and “US Gov’t You Have Made the World Miss Saddam Shame on You.”
Others held photographs of two priests who were killed in the Oct 31 attack on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad. As a man read aloud the names of the dead, protesters wearing white T-shirts spattered with red lay down on the ground of the plaza.
The siege that left 58 dead was the worst attack by Islamic militants on the country’s Christian minority since the 2003-US led invasion.

“There are some solutions we’re asking for, demands we have to make,” said Joe Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America.
Those include calling on the US and Iraqi governments as well as the international community to provide better protection for Iraq’s Christians. Kassab said they also seek a more secular, less sectarian Iraqi constitution that recognizes “other people sharing the land.”
“Christians of the world — mainly Christians of America — they don’t know there are Biblical Christians in Iraq,” said Kassab, who is also a board member of the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America.
“They should be helping them, they should be saving them.”