U.S. President George W. Bush said Thursday that he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki agreed in high-stakes talks that Iraq should not be partitioned into separate, semiautonomous zones. "The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence," Bush said after nearly two and a half hours of talks aimed at stabilizing Iraq. "I agree." Al-Maliki left the door open for countries like Iran and Syria to play a part in Iraq's struggle for peace. "We are ready to cooperate with everybody who believes that the need to cooperate with the national unity government, especially our neighbors," al-Maliki said. He said that "Iraq is for Iraqis and its borders will be sound." Both Bush and al-Maliki also said during the news conference that they had discussed coming up with ways to accelerate the handover of Iraqi security responsibility from U.S. forces to Iraq, the Associated Press reported. Bush had been scheduled to participate in a three-way session with al-Maliki and Jordan's King Abdullah II, rearranging his overseas itinerary to be in Amman for both days for talks aimed at reducing the spiral of violence in Iraq.
