Almotamar.net Reuters - BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Iraq's leaders on Friday that U.S. support was not open-ended and legislation to speed up reconciliation between Sunnis and Shi'ites had to be passed by the end of the summer.
"Progress in reconciliation will be an important element in our evaluation in the late summer," Gates said, referring to a timeframe U.S. commanders have said will be used to gauge the progress of a nine-week-old security crackdown in Baghdad.
"Our commitment to Iraq is long-term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq's streets open-endedly," he told a news conference.
Gates' comments were among the bluntest by a senior U.S. official calling for Iraq's leaders to accelerate reconciliation efforts between minority Sunnis once dominant under Saddam Hussein and newly-empowered majority Shi'ites.
"I think we will see where we are at the end of summer," he said, when asked what would happen if Iraq did not pass the legislation by then.
Washington, which has 146,000 troops in Iraq, is putting more pressure on Maliki's fractious government to speed up a law on sharing Iraq's oil wealth and rolling back a ban on members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from office.
Gates said in his meeting with Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki he expressed the hope that parliament "will not recess for the summer without passing laws on hydrocarbons, debaathification, provincial elections and other measures".

These measures will not fix all the problems in Iraq, but they will manifest the will of the entire government of Iraq to be a government for all of the people in Iraq in the future," he said.
A spokesman for the speaker of Iraq's parliament said lawmakers were due to go on summer recess in July and August.
Tensions between Shi'ites and Sunnis remain high since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 unleashed a wave of violence that has killed tens of thousands. More have fled their homes.
OIL LAW
U.S. military commanders have repeatedly said there is no military solution to the violence and that the crackdown in Baghdad is aimed only at giving Iraq's government breathing space to speed up national reconciliation.
But analysts say the government has so far failed to match some early gains in the crackdown with political progress and that the international community must play a greater role.
Iraq's cabinet will present the oil law to parliament next week, but it faces opposition from Iraq's oil-rich northern Kurdistan region which says some details are unconstitutional.
The law is seen as vital for Iraq to attract investment from foreign firms to boost its oil output and rebuild its economy.

Maliki's government has also agreed on a plan to allow thousands of former members of Saddam's party to return to public life, but a bill has not yet gone to parliament and there is likely to be fierce opposition to it.
On his first trip to Iraq since the U.S.-backed security crackdown was launched in February, Gates warned Iraq's leaders that America's patience was wearing thin.
More than 3,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. U.S. President George W. Bush is under growing pressure at home to set a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal, something he has so far rejected outright.
Gates arrived in Iraq a day after suspected Sunni al Qaeda militants killed 200 people on Wednesday in the worst violence since the Baghdad security plan was launched.
"What seems clear to me is that al Qaeda has declared war on all of Iraq," he said.