What The Next President Will Do.

However adamant they are now about their respective plans, the three candidates to the US presidency will have to conform their positions to whatever security and political situations they confront as commander in chief next year. The two Democrats' plans to withdraw US troops quickly may be tempered by the realities of what that entails. If Republican Sen. McCain is president, he would be responsive to the electorate and find a US troop level for Iraq which is sustainable.

The quest for wiggle room came into relief recently as an aide to Barack Obama said the candidate's plan to remove most US troops from Iraq within 16 months was "a best-case scenario" - a nod to those who suggest his plan is unrealistic. That aide, Samantha Power, left the campaign. But supporters of each of the candidates acknowledge that positions could change when any one of them gets into office. The Christian Science Monitor on March 17 quoted Rep Joe Sestak (D) of Pennsylvania, a retired rear admiral and a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, as saying: "Anything can always change because you have to deal with the situation when you inherit it".

Sen. Clinton has not offered a "date certain" for the last troops to exit Iraq, but has said that, within 60 days of taking office, she would want the Pentagon to produce a withdrawal plan. Rep Sestak does not expect Clinton's withdrawal plans to change a lot if she is elected president, but he acknowledges that direct counsel from the Pentagon could result in a slight tweak of her plan to remove troops at the rate of one to two brigades a month, to suit the realities at the time.

The Obama campaign, which has focused on what it calls the "strategic blunder" of invading Iraq, says the 16-month time frame is realistic. The Monitor quoted Susan Rice, an Obama adviser, as saying: "We need to draw down our combat brigades, we hope roughly at the pace of one to two a month. We have to calibrate that, obviously, to circumstances on the ground".

McCain has said US troops should remain in Iraq for many years. Long a backer of the "surge", McCain, will fight to keep substantial numbers in Iraq. But his position will reflect the circumstances he would confront as president. McCain, who arrived in Iraq on March 16 and left on March 18, has maintained that Americans will not object to a sizable number of forces in Iraq as long as the troops are not getting shot at.

Neo-con military expert Max Boot at the powerful Council on Foreign Relations - of which Vice-President Cheney is a pillar - and an adviser to McCain, says: "If we manage to stabilise the situation in Iraq and manage to get casualties close to zero, I don't think the idea of having troops there is terribly controversial". He says President Bill Clinton promised to get troops out of Bosnia, yet many are still there a decade later.

Reconciliation Conference & Prospects: A national reconciliation conference was held at a heavily guarded convention centre in Baghdad's Green Zone on March 18-19 with about 450 attending. In his opening address, PM Maliki urged the participants to prevent personal or group ambitions from keeping the national reconciliation goal blocked. He stressed the need for all to sacrifice for the sake of Iraq emerging as a strong and united country able to prosper and benefit from the many opportunities being offered by an improved environment, such as better security in the country now than in 2005.

Yet the event was marred by deep political and religious fissures. The conference was boycotted by four key blocs - the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) which is the main Sunni group with 44 seats in parliament, the smaller Sunni Dialogue group of Saleh Mutlaq, the secular Iraqi List of former PM Iyad Allawi, and the Sadrist Si'ites. Few, if any, prominent Ba'thists, militia members or representatives of the insurgency - the groups which many say represent the main obstacles to reconciliation - showed up.

Shaikh 'Ali Hatem al-Suleiman, leader of the Sunni Anbar Awakening Council (AAC) and a key Arab tribal figure, stormed out of the auditorium after the opening speeches, saying: "People want answers from us. We're not going to sit here only to listen to speeches".

Success or failure of reconciliation efforts come January 2009 will determine the approach of the next president at the White House. Gen Petraeus maintains that Iraqi reconciliation, thought disappointingly slow, is still possible.