Iraqi leaders are welcoming U.S. plans to pull American combat troops out of Iraq by the end of August 2010. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says his country's security forces have proven they are ready to take over.

According to CNN President Barack Obama called former President George Bush as a "courtesy" letting him know about his plans to withdrow from Iraq by 2010 August.

Iraq's Prime Minister ordered a nationwide freeze on Iraqi raids against Shiite militants, bowing to demands by anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr only one day after promising to expand the crackdown to Baghdad.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says Iraqi forces will mount a major offensive against al-Qaida elements in the northern city of Mosul.

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki said that he was prepared to hold urgent talks with the Turkish govt to defuse the crisis over a possible military incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas.

Iraq's top Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders vowed to boost national reconciliation by agreeing to resolve key disputed issues that have thrown the war-ravaged country in a political turmoil.

A new U.S. intelligence estimate says there have been some improvements in the security situation in Iraq. It also says, however, that the Iraqi government is still unable to govern effectively and will remain in a precarious state, at least for the near future. VOA correspondent Gary Thomas reports.

U.S. President George Bush says he supports Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The president's statement came in a speech Wednesday that followed calls by a U.S. senator for replacing the government in Baghdad. VOA White House correspondent Scott Stearns reports, the president is hoping to restore public support for the war in Iraq by comparing that fight to past American intervention in East Asia.

Ties between Iraq and Syria appear to be warming, as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pursues a second day of high level meetings with top Syrian officials, including President Bashar al Assad. For VOA, Edward Yeranian reports from Beirut.

Amid efforts to garner neighbors' support for curbing violence at home, Iraq's embattled Nouri al-Maliki came to Syria on Monday on his first visit in Damascus.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government's military and political progress on Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave "any time they want."