The Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq is coming in for increasing criticism in the United States, mainly from right-wing figures who regard it as defeatist. The report - named after the two co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group - was presented last Wednesday, but President Bush, while praising the work of the Iraq Study group, has yet to endorse its recommendations.
When the report was presented last Wednesday, most reactions centred on Iraq's neighbours, including Syria and Iran, which the report said the US should talk to. That is perhaps understandable. After all, in January 2002 President Bush included Iran in his "axis of evil" and since then, for all practical purposes, Syria has also joined that dubious club. So, direct negotiations with these two countries would require a 180-degree policy U-turn. A headline-grabbing difficulty for President Bush.
The Iraqis
However, those primarily concerned with the war in Iraq are, of course, not the neighbours, but the Iraqis themselves. On this point, the main recommendation of the report was that US forces should withdraw from a direct combat role in fighting the insurgency. Instead they should be deployed in units embedded within the Iraqi Army, as trainers and advisors only.
This recommendation has not gone down well with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. He has dismissed the embedding of thousands of American soldiers at all levels of the Iraqi Army as an insult to Iraqi sovereignty. He made clear over the weekend that key decisions about Iraqi security should be taken first and foremost by Iraqis themselves.
Overblown
In light of the poor performance of Iraqi security and police forces so far, and their inability to hold their ground on their own against the insurgents without American help, Mr Talibani's hurt nationalist pride seems a little overblown. And it does not take much digging to discover that the real source of his vociferous opposition to the Baker-Hamilton plan lies elsewhere.
Mr Talabani is president of Iraq, but his power and influence derive first and foremost from being one of the two key Iraqi Kurdish leaders. The other one is Mr Masud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan. Mr Barzani and Hoshyar Zebari - Iraq's Kurdish Minister of Foreign Affairs - have also levelled serious criticism at the report.
Worst nightmare
The main reason for the outspoken Kurdish criticism is that the Baker-Hamilton report advocates a much greater and more powerful role for the central government than the loose federalism Iraq is currently experiencing - which also includes a national sharing of the country's oil revenue. But a strong and, most of the time, oppressive central state epitomises for the Kurds the worst nightmare they have suffered, and not only under Saddam Hussein.
Giving up today's independence from the central government in Baghdad is the last thing the Kurds would be ready to accept. Besides, they argue, greater power for the regions, such as the Kurdish one in the north, is embedded in Iraq's constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved by the Iraqi people.
Most resisted
There have been many more criticisms of the report in Iraq, both from Kurdish and Shiá sources, but the suggested changing of the constitution to accommodate the Sunnis and reinforce the powers of the central government is the element that will be most resisted.
This does not bode very well for the implementation of the report's recommendations. The more so since, at home, President Bush has publicly praised the work of the Iraq Study Group while studiously avoiding to adopt its conclusions. In the meantime, he is frantically looking for other options.
But, as Messrs Baker and Hamilton said from the start, there is no magic formula for solving the problems of Iraq. And for all its weaknesses, the main strength of their report is perhaps that it forces every one else to come up with better alternatives.
Tags: Baker, Bush, constitution, critics, Group, Hamilton, Iraq, Kurds, right wing, Study, Talabani, Washington