VARIOUS: World greets with caution President Bush's decision to send an extra 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq.

President George W. Bush told Americans he has ordered 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq, as part of a new strategy for tackling the conflict. The new strategy was greeted with caution across the world. George W. Bush told Americans he would send an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to halt Iraq's collapse into civil war but many Iraqis -- and the president's opponents in Congress -- were sceptical the increase could do much good. "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people - and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me, " Bush said in a televised address. As voters questioned the value of adding to the 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq, Bush said the Iraqi government must keep promises to rein in militants on all sides to retain his backing -- restating a condition some analysts see as pre-emptively shifting responsibility for any future failure to end bloodshed. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday (January 11) that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's team had to do a better job on security. She aknowledged mistakes had been made on all sides. "Well as the president said last night there have been mistakes and all us that have been involved in it are responsible for those mistakes and we are also responsible I think for helping the Iraqi people to overthrow a dictator, to create a functioning political system that has a chance of giving them a way to resolve their differences peacefully rather than by violence. And we have to give that chance now to the Iraqi people to really make this work. This is a young democracy, this government has only been in power for nine months and the president's plan last night made very clear that we understand mistakes, but that t he Iraqis also understand mistakes." Rice said she would fly to Baghdad soon to check on progress. Bush's Democratic opponents, now controlling Congress, vowed to resist but are unlikely to block a four-month phased increase of 21,500 troops that would push the U.S. force, now at 127,000 according to the military in Iraq, back to its level four months ago. Of the new troops, 4,000 are for Sunni Anbar province. In Iraq, responses to the latest plan highlighted sectarian divides, with Sunnis hoping for the best and many Shi'ites increasingly resentful of the presence of the Americans. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad, the heart of resistance to the U.S. invasion four years ago, now look to the Americans to protect them from perceived domination by Iranian-backed Shi'ites. But in Sadr City, Shi'ites enjoying their demographic power after decades of oppression under Saddam, have grown suspicious of the U.S. forces that ended Saddam's oppression of them. Governments around the world reacted with caution to Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq. Britain said on Thursday it would not send more troops to Iraq and would press ahead with plans to scale back its presence in the key southern city of Basra, but that it supported the U.S. troop buildup in central Iraq. "It is not our intention to send more troops at the present time," Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told reporters in London. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the situation in Iraq was worsening day by day, and there was the need for an Iraqi solution. "We think that the only solution that will allow Iraq to recover its stability, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity and its national unity, lies in the participation of all parts of Iraqi society, civil, political and religious. So, it is on the basis of a global approach and a political strategy that Iraq will be able to recover its stability, and beyond Iraq the stability of the region," Douste-Blazy told journalists at the French Foreign Ministry in Paris.

ITN Source | January 11, 2007

Tags:. .conflict. .sunnis. .collapse. .tackling. .rice