Top Sunni And Shiite To Meet With Bush

As Sunnis and Shiites continue to target each other in Iraq, top leaders from each group will be meeting with President Bush.

First up will be one of the most powerful Shiite politicians in Iraq, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. He will meet Mr. Bush on Monday to discuss ways to improve the deteriorating situation.

Meanwhile in Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched six raids against insurgents, including one that killed at least three Iraqis in house-to-house fighting and another in which American forces wounded a female Iraqi who the U.S. command said was being used as a "human shield."

Al-Hakim is leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the largest party in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's governing coalition. He is a rival of al-Maliki, and many consider al-Hakim an even more powerful political figure because of his party's electoral strength among Shiites and its Badr Brigade militia.

U.S. intelligence sources tell CBS News that al-Hakim's forces were the first to send death squads against Sunni targets, CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante reports.

SCIRI runs the Badr Brigade, a militia that is widely blamed for some of the sectarian killings that have been tearing Iraq apart since the bombing of a major Shiite shrine north of Baghdad in February.

Al-Hakim repeatedly has denied the involvement of the Badr Brigade in the violence, arguing the militia has been turned into a political organization. Before succeeding his slain brother as leader of SCIRI, al-Hakim was in charge of Badr, which was trained and armed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and fought on the side of Iran in its eight-year war against Saddam Hussein's army in the 1980s.

The empowerment of Iraq's Shiites following the ouster of Saddam's Sunni-led regime in 2003 has been a source of alarm to many governments in the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab world and sparked fear of Iran's growing influence in the region.

Bush will meet with al-Hakim in Washington on Monday in a bid to find a new approach in Iraq, said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "President Bush looks forward to an exchange of views and a discussion of important issues facing Iraq today," Johndroe said.

In addition to his White House meeting, al-Hakim will also speak to the U.S. Institute of Peace. On Tuesday, he has a scheduled appearance at the Catholic University Law School, CBS News State Department reporter Charlie Wolfson reports.

In January, President Bush will meet with Iraq's vice president, who is a Sunni leader and is on record saying the current Baghdad government should be replaced by a coalition that would guarantee collective decision-making.

Mr. Bush returned Thursday from an overseas trip that included a meeting with al-Maliki, whom the president called "the right guy" for the job.

Meanwhile, in some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq, Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. helicopters swept through Fadhil, one of Baghdad's oldest areas, in house-to-house combat, said police Lt. Ali Muhsin. The neighborhood is about a mile from the heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and American forces are based.

Fighting in the narrow streets and alleys, suspected insurgents armed with rifles and machine guns killed one Iraqi soldier and two civilians, said Muhsin. U.S. helicopter gunships hovered overhead, but did not open fire on the crowded neighborhoods of one-story homes, he said.

State-run Iraqiya TV said 43 suspected insurgents were taken into custody. Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman, said 28 people were detained in an operation aimed at capturing insurgents.

During five other raids, U.S. forces killed two insurgents and detained 27 Iraqis. The sweeps took place in Baghdad, the town of Youssifiyah to the south, and two locations to the north: near Taji, the U.S. Air Force base, and the town of Tarmiyah.

In the Taji area, soldiers killed one insurgent and wounded "a female local national who was being used as human shield by the terrorist," the U.S. command said. The female, whose name and age were not given, was hospitalized, the U.S. military said.

It was the fourth time this week that a female Iraqi civilian has been killed or wounded in crossfire between U.S. forces and insurgents.

"Terrorists continue to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence," the U.S. statement said.

Friday's show of force came a day after President Bush rejected calls for a measured withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. At the meeting with Mr. Bush, al-Maliki — who faces domestic opposition to U.S. forces — said Iraqis could take full control by June.

A widening revolt within al-Maliki's divided government showed no signs of subsiding, with 30 lawmakers and five Cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr continuing their political boycott to protest the prime minister's meeting with Mr. Bush.

A report due Wednesday from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group will suggest gradually phasing the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq from combat to training and supporting Iraqi units.

"This has really got to become more and more of an Iraqi problem, and less and less of a U.S. one," National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said in remarks that will air Sunday on C-SPAN. "I would hope that our forces can take more of a support role and a training role, and fall more into the background rather than being in the lead in the months ahead."

The study team headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., also recommends a gradual reduction of U.S. forces and a more aggressive regional diplomacy. However, it sets no timetable, according to officials familiar with the group's deliberations. The report could give Bush political cover to shift tactics in the increasingly unpopular war.

The Sadrists, who want Iraqi forces to take control of the country's security and coalition forces to pull out, said Thursday's meeting was an affront to Iraqis.

Falah Hassan Shanshal, a Shiite lawmaker with the Sadrist group, criticized al-Maliki for winning a unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to extend for one year the mandate of the 160,000-strong multinational force in Iraq. At the time, the prime minister said a priority of his government is to assume full responsibility for security and stability throughout Iraq, but that it needs more time.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said an American soldier was killed during combat in the capital Thursday, raising the number of U.S. troops who died in November to at least 67, well under the 105 reported dead in October.

Sectarian attacks also continued Friday in Baghdad, with at least 12 Iraqis killed and a Sunni Arab mosque damaged in Baghdad, despite a weekly four-hour vehicle ban aimed at preventing suicide car bombers during Friday prayers.

Gunmen also kidnapped the Sunni head of one of Iraq's leading soccer clubs on Thursday and, in separate abductions Friday, two Iraqi women, ages 17 and 20.