Meanwhile, speaking in the Netherlands, the Iranian foreign minister said Iran is open to negotiations but rejects an overt linkage to the Bush administration’s problems in Iraq.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki: “We do believe that making a decision to withdraw from Iraq does not need any negotiations with Iran or any other countries in the region. That is a decision which should be realized through the coordination with the Iraqis’ government.”

And in Jordan, the spokesperson of a major Iraqi Sunni group said the Iraq Study Group report recognized the defeat of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.

Bashar Faidi of the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association: “The American policy came to a prosperous house and turned it into ruins. It cannot put its bricks in order now or rebuild it again. It pushed Iraq into a real disaster that would not only affect Iraq, but the whole region and then the world.”