US President George W. Bush will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan next week with grim new statistics showing record numbers of Iraqis were killed last month and many more fled the country. A UN report put civilian deaths in October at 3,709 - 120 a day and up from 3,345 in September.
Nearly 420,000 moved to other parts of Iraq since the February bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra triggered a surge in sectarian attacks. It said as well as those displaced within Iraq, nearly 100,000 people were fleeing to Syria and Jordan every month - proportionally equivalent to a million Americans emigrating each month, depriving the US economy of a city the size of Detroit.
The meeting between Bush and Maliki in the Jordanian capital Amman, a much safer venue than Baghdad, will follow a weekend visit to Iran by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and this week's landmark visit to Iraq by Syria's foreign minister. They will be the first lengthy talks between Bush and Maliki since Bush pledged a new approach on Iraq after his Democratic opponents took control of the US Congress. A month ago the two spoke to ease mutual irritation over how much the other was doing to halt violence.
They agreed to draw up plans for accelerating the training of Iraqi forces and the transfer of responsibility. Maliki said Iraqis could take charge in six months, half the US estimate. A joint statement on the November 29-30 summit said: "We will focus our discussions on current developments in Iraq, progress made to date in the deliberations of a high-level joint committee on transferring security responsibility and the role of the region in supporting Iraq."
American politicians, notably Democrats pressing for troop withdrawal, are frustrated that, after six months in power, Maliki has failed to disband militias loyal to fellow Shias. With Bush's allies urging him to reach out on Iraq to US adversaries in Tehran and Damascus, Washington reacted coolly to the flurry of regional diplomacy seen with Syria restoring full relations with Iraq and Talabani saying he would visit Iran.
FRESH IDEAS: According to the UN bimonthly human rights report, Baghdad was the epicentre of the violence, accounting for nearly 5,000 of all the 7,054 deaths in September and October, with most of the bodies bearing signs of torture and gunshot wounds.
Sectarian attacks were the main source of violence, fuelled by insurgent attacks and militias as well as criminal groups. "Entire communities have been affected to various degrees and, in some areas, neighbourhoods have been split up or inhabitants have been forced to flee to other areas or even to neighbouring countries in search of safety," the report said.
The report said that ethnic and religious minorities, such as Christians, were being targeted along with professionals such as academics, lawyers, judges and journalists. It also raised questions about the sectarian loyalties and effectiveness of Iraq's 300,000-strong US-trained security forces ahead of next week's meeting between Bush and Maliki to discuss speeding up the handover of security control to Iraq.
"There are increasing reports of militias and death squads operating from within the police ranks or in collusion with them," it said. "Its forces are increasingly accused of ... kidnapping, torture, murder, bribery ... extortion and theft."
Militias were also reported to be forcibly evicting people from their homes. One such is Waleed Jihad, who lives in a tent in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, 330 km (200 miles) north of the Baghdad home he was forced to leave by Shia militias.
"I'm living in a tent because we are practising democracy in a jungle, where the mighty kill the weak," said Jihad, 37, a Sunni Arab from the Shia stronghold of Kadhimiya where, he said, gunmen gave him a 48-hour ultimatum to get out of town.
Following the Republicans' defeat at Congressional elections this month, Bush has said he is looking for "fresh perspectives" on Iraq. Next month he is expected to receive recommendations on Iraq from a bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and the Pentagon is conducting its own review.