Biden No Longer a Lone Voice on Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

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By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — A few hours after getting off a plane from America’s war zones, Joseph R. Biden Jr. slipped into a chair, shook off his jet lag and reflected on what he had seen. The situation in Iraq, he said, was much improved. In Pakistan, he said he saw encouraging signs.

Then he came to Afghanistan and shook his head.

“It has deteriorated significantly,” he said. “It’s going to be a very heavy lift.”

That was six days before Mr. Biden was sworn in as vice president in January, and just after he had met with President-elect Barack Obama, who had sent him on the fact-finding mission to figure out just what the new administration was inheriting. Mr. Biden’s assessment was even grimmer during his private meeting with Mr. Obama, according to officials.

From the moment they took office, Mr. Biden has been Mr. Obama’s in-house pessimist on Afghanistan, the strongest voice against further escalation of American forces there and the leading doubter of the president’s strategy. It was a role that may have been lonely at first, but has attracted more company inside the White House as Mr. Obama rethinks the strategy he unveiled just seven months ago.

For Mr. Biden, a longtime senator who prided himself on his experience in foreign relations, the role represents an evolution in his own thinking, a shift from his days as a liberal hawk advocating for American involvement in Afghanistan. Month by month, year by year, the story of Mr. Biden’s disenchantment with the Afghan government, and by extension with the engagement there, mirrors America’s slow but steady turn against the war, with just 37 percent supporting more troops in last week’s CBS News poll.

“He came to question some of the assumptions and began asking questions about whether there might be other approaches that might get you as good or better results at lower cost,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been consulted by Mr. Biden on the matter.

Mr. Biden does not favor abandoning Afghanistan, but his approach would reject the additional troops sought by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and leave the American force in Afghanistan roughly the same, 68,000 troops. Rather than emphasize protecting the Afghan population, he would accelerate training of Afghans to take over the fight while hunting Al Qaeda in Pakistan using drones and special forces. His view has caught on with many liberals in his party.

“The vice president is asking great questions and he understands this issue very, very deeply,” said Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Biden’s successor as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “He’s been there many times. He knows the issues and the personalities very well. He’s set out a good analysis.”

Beyond Mr. Biden’s strategic concerns, some who participated in administration deliberations earlier this year said he was keenly aware that the country, and particularly his party’s liberal base, was growing tired of the war and might not accept many more years of extensive American commitment.

“I think a big part of it is, the vice president’s reading of the Democratic Party is this is not sustainable,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s review this year. “That’s a part of the process that’s a legitimate question for a president — if I do this, can I sustain it with political support at home? That was the argument the vice president was making back in the winter.”

But Mr. Riedel said the public could be persuaded to stick by the war with a well-articulated argument by the president. And others, more harshly, argue that Mr. Biden’s judgment on foreign policy has often been off base.

They point out that he voted against the successful Persian Gulf war of 1991, voted for the Iraq invasion of 2003, proposed dividing Iraq into three sections in 2006 and opposed the additional troops credited by many with turning Iraq around in 2007.

“When was the last time Biden was right about anything?” Thomas E. Ricks, a military writer, wrote in a blog on Sept. 24. Mr. Ricks is affiliated with the Center for a New American Security, a research organization founded by Democrats.

Mr. Biden's office rejects that criticism.

"From nuclear arms control to ending ethnic cleaning in the Balkans to confronting the threat of terrorism, the vice president has not only been right on many of the toughest questions of U.S. foreign policy over the past 30 years, he has been consistently ahead of the curve," said Jay Carney, his communications director.

Mr. Biden’s journey on the American war in Afghanistan began where it did for many political leaders. He strongly supported President George W. Bush’s decision to topple the Taliban after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and after traveling there in January 2002 was convinced that half-measures were not enough.

When the United States invaded Iraq, Mr. Biden’s attention shifted, but he eventually expressed concern that attention was being diverted from Afghanistan and refocused on what Democrats were calling “the good war” as he opened his campaign for president.

In January 2007, he opposed Mr. Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq by arguing that “if we’re going to surge anywhere,” then it “should be Afghanistan.” In August of that year, when Mr. Obama, too, proposed more troops for Afghanistan, Mr. Biden’s camp responded with a statement calling him a “Johnny-come-lately” and suggesting that it was “a little disingenuous” of Mr. Obama.

But by the time Mr. Biden traveled to Afghanistan again in February 2008, he was rethinking his views, according to people close to him. He had grown sour on President Hamid Karzai and the Kabul government’s pervasive corruption. During a now-famous dinner, Mr. Biden became exasperated by Mr. Karzai’s denials about corruption, threw down his napkin and declared, “This dinner is over.”

Mr. Biden also engaged in a tough talk with Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the NATO commander in Afghanistan at the time.

“His concept was to keep a small footprint, have an offshore strategy as the sole approach to seeking better security and stability in Afghanistan and focus on counterterrorism and the hard-core ideologues who won’t change,” General McNeill said. But the general disagreed: “It could lead to greater insecurity and instability in that region.”

Mr. Biden had also been influenced by the difficult years in Iraq. “The Iraq experience has been an important, formative one in the sense that Biden has been much more aware that fighting insurgents is not entirely a military process,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser who has talked with Mr. Biden about it.

When Mr. Biden visited Afghanistan in January for a third time, he returned increasingly convinced that America’s national interest lay in Pakistan. With fewer than 100 Qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan, he reasoned, the nation was investing disproportionate resources in the wrong country.

In an interview hours after he returned, Mr. Biden sounded deeply pessimistic. “There’s very little governance, there’s significant corruption and the drug trade is humongous,” he said. While some allies had been helpful, he said, “others have dropped the ball considerably.” So Mr. Obama needed “fresh assessment of and assertion of what the goal” should be.

Nine months later, Mr. Obama is reassessing his goal. While officials anticipate that he will fall between the suggestions from Mr. Biden and his commanding general in Afghanistan, they agree that Mr. Biden has shaped the choices — not entirely unlike his predecessor, Dick Cheney.

“There are some ironic similarities to Cheney’s definition of the job and Biden’s in one sense,” Mr. Haass said. “They’re both people who are not hobbled by their own ambitions, they’re both experienced national security hands, and it freed up Cheney and it frees up Biden to give an honest take.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Joe Biden, White House Truth Teller - Newsweek.com

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From health-care reform to Afghanistan, Joe Biden has bucked Obama—as only a good Veep can.

By Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 10, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Oct 19, 2009

Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, "Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.

Back in March, Biden stood alone. When Obama announced that he was launching a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan—to develop the country and make its civilians safe from the Taliban—Biden was the only one of the president's top advisers to seriously question the wisdom of this course. The vice president even authored a short paper, called "Counterterrorism-Plus," outlining his case for a better-defined, more limited mission. The president listened but promised to review his policy again only after the Afghan election in August. Biden "didn't get a lot of traction internally," says a White House staffer familiar with the debate who did not want to be named discussing internal deliberations.

In the early days of the administration, Biden was a bit of a joke in some quarters of the White House. He was never the buffoonish character portrayed by late-night comics, but his off-message blurts were the source of eye-rolling and some irritation among the president's men and women. None of the gaffes was particularly damaging, but aides who'd been with Obama through the campaign knew that the president valued very tight control. Biden himself seemed wounded by the sniggering. Asked about his gaffes by a NEWSWEEK reporter last spring, he responded a little defensively, "A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me."

Biden can still be irrepressible and long-winded. But in the Oval Office he has learned to be more disciplined without losing his edge. His persistence and truth telling have paid off, and he's found a role for himself. On Afghanistan in particular, the vice president's once lonesome position now has high-level support. The president himself seems to be looking for a middle way—not pulling out of Afghanistan, but at the same time not sending in the more than 40,000 troops requested by the U.S. ground commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Biden has also played the gadfly on health care. He hasn't advocated a particular course of action, but rather has challenged the assumptions of others. "He says the things that others at the table don't want to talk about, or which they find uncomfortable," says White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Across the board, Biden's real value to the president is not really his specific advice. It's his ability to stir things up. Senior government officials who have participated in small meetings with the president and vice president have noticed Obama and Biden engaged in a duet. "The president will lean over, and they will quietly talk to each other. Biden will then question someone, make comments, and the president just leans back and seems to be taking it all in before he speaks," Attorney General Eric Holder tells NEWSWEEK. Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff, describes the interaction like this: "President Obama is one of the world's greatest listeners; you can't tell what he is thinking. He's able to watch the VP ask tough questions and doesn't have to do that himself. [In that way] he doesn't have to reveal what he's thinking. That's very valuable."

After the election, Obama spoke of wanting a "team of rivals" in the White House. That sounds very Lincolnesque, but in the wired world of cable and bloggers, rivals (or, more typically, their staffers) can quickly become leakers and troublemakers. Presidents can soon come to feel embattled and besieged; the natural inclination is to surround the presidency with yes men and true believers. Biden is a truth teller, almost congenitally so, but he is no backstabber. There is an appealing, slightly vulnerable quality about his eagerness to please. He may run off at the mouth, but he is known for his loyalty. "If there were no gaffes, there'd be no Joe. He's someone you can't help but like," says Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. It is significant that when Biden dissented on Afghanistan policy in the spring, he did not go running to the press with his opinions, and he quickly got on board with administration policy.

Biden and Obama did not instantly bond. As a junior senator, Obama was not an intimate of Biden, a six-term veteran and committee chairman. The two men were rivals for the Democratic nomination until Biden dropped out in the early primaries, and Obama chose Biden as his running mate partly because he was a safe political choice, reassuring to Joe Six-Pack voters who might find Obama a little haughty. But Obama knew that Biden could be a shrewd and pointed questioner, particularly on foreign policy. In the spring of 2008, when candidate Obama was regarded as a greenhorn on foreign policy, he surprised and impressed the pundits by deftly probing Gen. David Petraeus on Iraq policy at a congressional hearing. No one but Obama knew at the time that Biden had advised him on his line of questioning.

Offered the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket that August, Biden hesitated before saying yes. He was well aware of the professional dangers of the office—from the pronouncement of John Nance Garner, FDR's first vice president, that the job was "not worth a bucket of warm piss" to Dick Cheney's attempts to run a kind of shadow presidency. Neither prospect beckoned to Biden.

That fall he told The New Yorker that his model was Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to help the young John F. Kennedy navigate the shoals of Congress. It was an odd choice: LBJ was miserable, mocked by the Kennedys as "Uncle Cornpone," and Biden risked repeating his fate with the ambitious, smart guys around Obama. More wisely, Biden consulted Walter Mondale, the former senator who became Jimmy Carter's veep and was the first to insist on an office inside the White House, near the Oval Office. Mondale advised Biden to stake out his claim, to decide what he really wanted.

The answer was access. Biden did not want an agenda or an assigned policy task or a big staff. But he did want to be in the room when the decisions were made. Obama agreed and told him he wanted Biden's "unvarnished opinion." Recounting this moment to a NEWSWEEK reporter, Biden opened his arms wide and mock-bellowed, "You've got it!"

At first Obama may have felt that he'd gotten more than he bargained for. The two men are Mutt and Jeff, warm and a little verbose versus precise and a little too cool. After serving as a committee chairman, wielding his own gavel, Biden had trouble adjusting to the bureaucratic strictures of the vice presidency. "This is the first time I've had a boss in 37 years," he told NEWSWEEK in May. To his staff, he would sometimes confess that he had talked too long or said the wrong thing at a meeting with the president—that he had to sharpen his approach.

Less than a month into the Obama presidency, Biden forthrightly, if unwisely, declared that the new administration's economic plan had a "30 percent chance" of failure. Asked about this at a press conference, Obama smiled thinly and answered, "You know, I don't remember what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly." Obama's staffers, who were lined up along the back wall at the presser, snickered along with the press.

Biden felt insulted. Through staffers, Obama apologized, protesting that he had meant no disrespect. But at one of their regularly scheduled weekly lunches, Biden directly raised the incident with the president. The veep said he was trying to be more disciplined about his own remarks, but he asked that in return the president refrain from making fun (and require his staff to do likewise). He made the point that even the impression that the president was dissing him was not only bad for Biden, but bad for the administration. The conversation cleared the air, according to White House aides who did not want to be identified discussing a private -conversation.

To demonstrate their palship (and dampen the rumors of disaffection between them), the president and vice president were photographed at one point, sleeves rolled up, eating hamburgers together. Biden worked on discretion. Asked by NEWSWEEK as he flew on Air Force Two in the spring if he could describe any moments when he had influenced the president's thinking, Biden stared down at his hands for a few seconds. "I think I should let him tell you that," he finally said. "Good answer!" exclaimed his relieved communications director, Jay Carney.

Biden can get carried away gushing on about all the time he spends with the president ("Four hours a day!") and his close relations in the administration. ("Hillary Clinton!" Biden exclaims, throwing an arm in the air. "We've been friends for 20 years! Confidants!") But in fact his many friendships forged over the years are highly useful to Obama, who had spent just four years in Washington before becoming president, and half of that on the road campaigning. Biden "knows all the players," says Emanuel. On a trip to Europe and the Middle East this summer, Biden joked and guffawed with political leaders across two continents. He was also able to privately deliver bad news and the occasional scolding in a way the president never could. With the Russians in particular, the president and vice president played good cop–bad cop. Obama publicly declared that he wanted to establish a new era of good feeling with the Kremlin while Biden reminded the Russians that Washington was watching their territorial ambitions and human-rights record.

Biden is especially useful with his former colleagues in the Senate, where he showed an unusual willingness to reach across the aisle. He is still a regular in the Senate gym and dining room. "I've seen him so much, it's like he never left," says Sen. Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania. Though Biden initially suggested that Obama might not want to try for health-care reform in his first year in office, the veep has been conscientiously rounding up votes for months. He also brought a dose of reality to the internal discussions over how far the administration could go. "He's been asking, 'What are the trade-offs here?'" says Emanuel. "Early on in the administration everyone thinks you can do everything everywhere. He was the one saying you need to make choices—choices within the health-care system and choices between that and other initiatives. By stating the uncomfortable—or stating the obvious if you've spent time in Congress—he helped people see with better clarity what the choices were, and the consequences of those choices." Emanuel likes to say that government is often a choice between bad and worse, and suggests Biden understands that as well as anyone in the administration.

That description perfectly captures the president's options on Afghanistan. In March, when Obama made his decision to back a counterinsurgency strategy, there was not a searching examination in the White House over the potential cost—in bodies, money, or political capital—or the real prospects for success. During the presidential campaign, Obama had declared that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the right war, and so the assumption at the White House was that the president would have to make good on his words. He had a request for at least 30,000 more troops on his desk, and he wanted to get enough of them to Afghanistan in time to be of use for the August election. (He ultimately approved a troop increase of 21,000, to a total of 68,000.) Only Biden vigorously questioned whether America would have the patience or resources for a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan over the long run. Obama said he'd review the situation again after the election.

In June, Obama appointed General McChrystal commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan (relieving Gen. David McKiernan, who was deemed to be insufficiently creative and forward-leaning by the Pentagon high command). The general was given 60 days to make a recommendation on how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy. McChrystal wrote a classified 66-page report (later leaked to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post) calling for more than 40,000 additional troops and a rigorous attempt to cut down on civilian casualties. McChrystal warned that the situation was "deteriorating" and that, without reinforcements, "failure" was a real possibility.

In Washington, Biden "appeared to grow uncomfortable with the administration rushing to double down without thinking it through," says Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served both Presidents Bush. Haass, who had opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, had written an op-ed in The New York Times on Aug. 20 arguing that Afghanistan was a "war of choice," not a "war of necessity"—refuting Obama's characterization in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that same week. Biden called Haass and began quizzing him, later inviting him down to dinner in Washington. "By late August, early September," says Haass, "Biden was pressing his case with the president and the other principals."

Biden has been incorrectly characterized as a dove who wants to pull out of Afghanistan. In fact, according to his "Counterterrorism-Plus" paper, he wants to maintain a large troop presence. He also favors a greater emphasis on training Afghan troops—and defending Kabul and Kandahar—than on chasing the Taliban around the countryside, and he wants more diplomatic efforts to try to peel away those Taliban who can be bought with money or other inducements (like political power). He is leery of massive attempts at nation building and more hopeful that the United States can work with local warlords than with the corrupt and inept central government in Kabul. On a grander strategic level, he wants to tilt the administration's efforts more toward Pakistan (to "make the problem PakAf, not AfPak"), reasoning that Al Qaeda—the real threat to the United States—is hiding out not in Afghanistan but in nuclear-armed -Pakistan.

Biden was once a liberal interventionist. During the 1990s he pushed to use force in the Balkans to stop Serb territorial aggression and genocide. But he has always been a member of the Vietnam generation, and, unlike some younger members of the administration, including the president, he has a firsthand memory of American defeat. "There are a lot of differences [between Vietnam and Afghanistan]," says Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska and a Vietnam vet who often talks to Biden, "but one of the similarities is how easily and quickly a nation can get bogged down in a very dangerous part of the world. It's easy to get into but not easy to get out. The more troops you throw in places, the more difficult it is to work it out because you have an investment to protect."

Long Washington experience has made Biden a political realist, if not a bit of a cynic. Shortly after 9/11, he described to NEWSWEEK's Michael Hirsh how he had been summoned to the White House for a heart-to-heart with George W. Bush. Bush reassured him that the United States would not abandon Afghanistan after routing Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Bush 43 even indirectly criticized Bush 41, who had turned away from the Afghans in 1989—after the United States had covertly helped the mujahedin rout the Soviet invaders. Biden warned Bush that the commitment would cost billions and take years and a large multinational force, but he was encouraged by the president's enthusiasm. As Biden was leaving the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer asked him to stop outside at the press stakeout to show that Bush's policies had bipartisan support. Biden agreed, but then Fleischer hesitated. "You're not going to say anything about 'nation building,' are you?" he asked. Biden dryly retorted, "You mean, what the president talked about for the last hour?" For Biden, the story encapsulated all the "phoniness" of the endless debate of America's role overseas. The Republicans had slammed Bill Clinton for years over nation building, but now that they were engaging in some of it themselves, they wanted to do it by another name.

On trips to Afghanistan with congressional delegations, Biden gradually grew disillusioned with President Hamid Karzai, who had seemed like such a heroic and hopeful figure in 2002. At a dinner Biden attended with Karzai and several other senators in early 2008, Karzai obstinately refused to concede that his government was riddled with corruption. Exasperated, Biden threw down his napkin and walked out.

Obama also had doubts, dating back to when he met Karzai during the campaign. But this August, as it appeared that Karzai or his followers had committed vast fraud in the election, other Obama administration officials also began to seriously doubt whether Karzai was worth the candle. Biden's earlier warnings began to take on more resonance in the White House war councils.

Biden, it should be noted, has not always showed the most clear-eyed judgment. In 1990 he voted against American involvement in the first Gulf war, which turned out to be a relatively low-cost success, whereas he voted for the invasion of Iraq, which turned into a near fiasco. He opposed the 2007 Iraq surge, which rescued the American effort from near defeat.

The president relies on Biden's judgment, but he may be more interested in having his veep play the devil's advocate. One senses, from both his track record and his recent remarks, that Obama is comfortable with having Biden push from one side and General McChrystal push from the other. Last week the president told congressional leaders that he did not plan on drawing down troops in Afghanistan, but by the same token he was rethinking the full-scale counterinsurgency strategy proposed by McChrystal. Obama has shown a penchant for splitting the difference, for finding the middle way on tough policy issues.

Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations—attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places—to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this "splitting the baby" and say it'll never work. As a senior civilian Pentagon official points out, "No one has more experience with counterterrorism than McChrystal," who ran black ops in Iraq and Afghanistan for five years. "If there was an easier, better way, he'd be pushing for it," says this official, who would not be quoted discussing internal deliberations. Opinions within the intelligence community are split, according to current and former operatives. Some back McChrystal's view that the only way to obtain the intelligence necessary to conduct counterterror operations is by a counterinsurgency campaign that protects civilians. Yet a significant minority of intelligence officials, at the CIA and elsewhere, doubt that more troops will make much difference; some think the additional forces could be counterproductive.

Senior military officials backing Mc-Chrystal have not given up hope that Obama will fully support the general, not Biden, and order tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan. It is impossible to know with certainty where Obama will come out on this; the strategy meetings will go on until atleast next week. But the presidentwill have confidence that whatever he decides, he will have challenged all assumptions and thrashed out all views. He can also be confident that he won't be second-guessed by his vice president. Biden is determined to be a "team player," says a close friend who asked for anonymity while commenting on Biden's motivations. "He wants to help the president. Joe is someone who is probably not going to run again. This is the apex of his career, and there is no separate agenda. There are people close to the president who are driven crazy by Joe's candor," says the friend. "But that's what you get with Joe."

With Daniel Klaidman, Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball, and Jeffrey Bartholet in Washington

U.S. Could End Engagement in Iraq if Violence Erupts, Biden Warns

By Nada Bakri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 4, 2009

BAGHDAD, July 3 -- Vice President Biden warned Iraqi officials Friday that the American commitment to Iraq could end if the country again descended into ethnic and sectarian violence.

Biden delivered the warning during a three-day visit to Iraq that began Thursday, just a few days after the United States formally withdrew most combat troops from Iraqi cities under a security agreement reached last year. It was the vice president's first visit since President Obama asked him to take the lead on Iraq policy.

In meetings with senior Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Biden stressed that the United States would remain engaged in Iraq, even as its military role diminishes in a withdrawal that is expected to dramatically gather pace after parliamentary elections in January.

But a senior administration official briefing journalists said Biden made that support contingent on Iraqi progress in resolving long-standing conflicts, some that bedeviled Iraq even before the United States invaded in March 2003.

If "Iraq were to revert to sectarian violence or engage in ethnic violence, then that's not something that would make it likely that we would remain engaged because, one, the American people would have no interest in doing that, and, as he put it, neither would he nor the president," the official said.

He added that there "wasn't any appetite to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if, by the action of people in Iraq, it fell apart."

The warning was a dramatic indication of the changing U.S. posture in Iraq, the foremost foreign policy concern of the Bush administration. The statements suggested that the Obama administration would absolve itself of responsibility if Iraq again descended into chaos, dragged down by still-unresolved crises. They include border disputes between Kurds and Arabs and also legislation for Iraq's oil resources.

Across Iraq, signs are rife of a diminishing U.S. role. Simply by virtue of the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops, the United States is sure to exercise decisive influence. But the power it once wielded inside Baghdad has passed. Along with last month's pullout -- and a far larger one due to end by August 2010 -- staffing at the U.S. Embassy will be reduced over the year as well.

Even the interaction of officials seems to have changed. Early Friday, Biden's aides huddled with advisers to Ayad al-Samarraie, the speaker of Iraq's parliament, trying to figure out a time the two men could meet.

An aide to Samarraie told the vice president's staff that the speaker had no more than 30 minutes to spare for the meeting. "That is the best I can do," the aide said in a conversation overheard at a presidential palace, as workers vainly tried to clean the aftermath of a sandstorm that has buffeted Baghdad for almost a week.

Some lawmakers were irritated by the secretive nature of Biden's visit.

"They have to treat Iraq as a sovereign country," lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said. "They should have let us know, and they should be welcomed like any other leader."

During the day, with the capital cloaked in the sickly yellow glow of the sandstorm, which hampered Biden's travel, the vice president met with Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and U.S. military commander Gen. Ray Odierno. He then met with senior Iraqi leaders and, at least publicly, stressed that the United States remains fully engaged.

"President Obama asked me to return with a message -- that the United States is committed to Iraq's progress and success," Biden said in a statement aired by Iraqi state television after his meeting with Maliki.

"We are looking forward to strengthening our relationship," Maliki added.

In Biden's last visit to Iraq, in January before Obama's inauguration, Iraqi and U.S. officials said he had delivered another message: American patience had its limits, and Iraqi politicians would have to make a more concerted attempt to resolve their conflicts, particularly over the disputed border and the future of the contested northern city of Kirkuk. He seemed to reiterate a version of that message Friday.

"These are challenges for the Iraqis themselves to face and solve," the senior administration official said. "It's not for us to solve it for them."

In Iraq, Biden to Press Officials to Forge Progress

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. landed in Baghdad on Thursday, beginning a two-day diplomatic mission that he said was intended to “re-establish contact” with Iraqi leaders and prod them toward settling internal disputes over oil revenues and political power-sharing.

Mr. Biden’s surprise trip, just days after American combat forces officially withdrew from Iraqi cities, underscores the concern in the White House about the fragility of the security situation. President Obama has asked Mr. Biden to serve as a kind of unofficial envoy to the country, and the vice president said this would be his first in a series of trips to the region.

The trip is unusually long for such a high-level official; when Mr. Obama visited Iraq, he spent just a few hours here, and President George W. Bush did not spend more than a day. But Mr. Biden said Iraq was at a pivotal moment, “the moment where a lot of Iraqis cynically believed we’d never keep the agreement.” He said the White House wanted to send a message to Iraqi leaders that it was engaged at the highest levels.

Earlier on Thursday, the Iraqi government said it had reached a tentative agreement to buy armaments from France and had signed a series of business deals with French companies to help rebuild Iraq.

The announcements came during a visit to Baghdad by the French prime minister, François Fillon, and about 30 French business executives. In February, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Baghdad, and in May, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, traveled to France.

The agreements announced Thursday represent a resumption of the close ties that existed between the French and Iraqi governments during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The relationship was interrupted by the United States-led invasion in 2003, which France opposed.

The contracts call for French companies to build roads, railroads, water treatment plants and a cement factory, as well as an airport south of Baghdad between the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who visit the cities each year.

The arms agreement, announced Thursday in a news release by the Iraqi government, states that the two nations intend to sign contracts to “buy, modernize and repair weapons and military equipment,” and that the French will provide training in the use of the armaments.

The release did not specify what sort of weapons Iraq intended to buy. During the 1970s and 1980s, France was a major supplier of arms to Iraq.

While Mr. Obama has hailed the withdrawal of combat troops as an “important milestone,” he has also expressed concern that the Iraqis are not moving quickly enough to forge a stable government. Just last week, Mr. Obama told reporters, “I haven’t seen as much political progress in Iraq negotiations between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds as I would like to see.”

Mr. Biden said he was here to deliver that message in person. “What is their plan to resolve the real differences that exist?” he asked.

But the vice president, who spent years as a senator developing relations with Iraqi officials, must now navigate a thicket of relationships within the Obama administration and avoid stepping on his colleagues’ toes as he takes on the added role of White House point man on Iraq.

Mr. Biden’s visit comes as the relationship between Baghdad and Washington is changing. Mr. Bush took a deeply personal interest in Iraq and conducted regularly scheduled secure video conference calls with Mr. Maliki. But Mr. Obama ended that practice; aides say he thought it more appropriate for his ambassador, Christopher R. Hill, and the top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, to handle such day-to-day contacts.

In putting Mr. Biden in the role of unofficial envoy, Mr. Obama may have recognized that he needed to pay greater attention to Baghdad. Mr. Biden said the job was Mr. Obama’s idea: “The president said, ‘Joe, go do it.’ ”

Mr. Biden is to meet with leaders, including Mr. Maliki, on Friday and celebrate the Fourth of July with troops. His son Beau is a captain in the Army National Guard in Iraq, and aides said the two would probably see each other at some point during the visit.

Like all high-level trips to Iraq, Mr. Biden’s journey was planned in secrecy.

Amir A. al-Obeidi, Riyadh Mohammed and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.