World and Nation

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WASHINGTON [HTML_REMOVED][HTML_REMOVED] On Monday President Bush told the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim party that the United States is not satisfied with the progress in Iraq and appealed for more help in fighting extremism and reconciling the country's increasingly fractured society.

But in a speech after their hour-long meeting, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim countered that U.S. troops need to do more to fight the insurgency and denied that the Shiite militias are fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq. It was one of the starkest criticisms of U.S. military strategy by an Iraqi leader.

"The strikes [the insurgents] are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts, but leave them to stand up again to resume their criminal acts," Hakim said in a speech at the United States Institute of Peace. "This means that there is something wrong in the policies taken to deal with that danger threatening the lives of Iraqis."

The only way to eliminate the danger of a civil war, he added, was through "decisive strikes" against insurgents once loyal to former leader Saddam Hussein. "Otherwise we'll continue to witness massacres ... against innocent Iraqis."

Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, arrived in Washington as the administration is reviewing its strategy in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton, D-Ind., is due to publish its recommendations Wednesday. The meeting also comes as U.S. officials try to repair relations with Shiite leaders who had expressed concern that the recent U.S. outreach to Sunni insurgents reflected a broader drift.

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LONDON [HTML_REMOVED] A team of British police investigators arrived in Moscow on Monday to begin questioning people about the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had recently become a British citizen, in a case that is straining relations between the two governments.

Home Secretary John Reid, speaking at a European Union meeting in Brussels, said the Scotland Yard officers in Moscow would "follow the evidence wherever it goes."

Although Russian officials have pledged to cooperate in the inquiry, their irritation over the case showed through in official comments. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Monday against "politicizing this issue" and "speculations on this subject." The Interfax news agency also quoted him as saying, "This is, of course, harming our relations."

In Russia, a jailed former intelligence officer made a plea Monday through his lawyers for British investigators to talk to him. Mikhail Trepashkin, who used to work in the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said an FSB officer had told him that Litvinenko was being targeted and "won't escape Trotsky's ice pick," a reference to the 1940 murder of Bolshevik figure Leon Trotsky by a Soviet agent in Mexico City.

Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko's, said he hoped British investigators would be allowed to interview Trepashkin in jail because he would be able to tell them about "rogue elements within the FSB," the domestic successor to the KGB.

Litvinenko, 43, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, accused Putin of ordering his killing, according to a statement Litvinenko's family and friends said he dictated on his deathbed.

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WASHINGTON [HTML_REMOVED] The Pentagon, engaged in a difficult fight to defeat a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, has resisted entreaties from federal anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive role in the faltering campaign to curb the country's opium trade.

Military units largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to transport federal drug agents on raids and do little to counter the organized crime syndicates that are shipping the addictive drug to Europe, Asia and, increasingly, the United States, according to officials and documents.