Sen. Jack Reed, right, confers with, from left, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Gen. David Petraeus, Sen. Barack Obama and Ambassador Ryan Crocker yesterday in Baghdad.

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Special to the Journal / SSG Lorie Jewell

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s talks with U.S. commanders and the prime minister of Iraq have reinforced his view that the correct war policy is to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq by the summer of 2010, he said yesterday.

Troop reductions in Iraq will permit the United States to “increase our forces to fight the central front on terrorism, which is in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan,” Obama said.

But Obama, speaking in a telephone interview from Baghdad, acknowledged significant military progress in Iraq since the Bush administration undertook its “surge” of additional combat troops last year –– a major shift in strategy that Obama strongly opposed at the time.

“We have seen a genuine reduction in violence and now we have the prime minister [Nouri al-Maliki] indicating that they would like a timetable to remove combat troops,” Obama said. “So we’ve got a convergence of events” that may “finally” allow “Iraqis to stand up and take charge of the situation, at the same time that we have a pressing need in Afghanistan.”

Obama spoke after meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the American coalition force in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. He also met with Maliki and other top Iraqi officials. During an earlier stop in Basra, he met with top Iraqi, U.S. and British military commanders.

Obama has traveled in recent days to Afghanistan and Iraq, accompanied by Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., both Army veterans. This is the 12th wartime visit to Iraq for Reed, a West Point graduate and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee.

Obama, a senator from Illinois who is to be nominated for president by his party next month with a record relatively light on foreign policy experience, is on a foreign tour that is highly unusual for this stage in a national campaign, evidently to bolster his credentials as a prospective commander in chief. Obama’s central strategic policy is his pledge, if elected, to begin pulling one or two combat brigades out of Iraq every month until the combat forces are withdrawn. He has also called for two combat brigades to be sent to Afghanistan, where U.S. commanders have reported a deteriorating security situation.

Obama sharply criticized Republican presidential candidate John McCain yesterday for coming late, in his view, to see the need for more troops in Afghanistan. He also asked how McCain would deliver those troops without pulling forces out of Iraq. McCain “isn’t just magically going to produce” fresh forces for Iraq, he said.

McCain, a Vietnam veteran with decades of Senate experience in global and military affairs, has criticized Obama for laying down firm strategic policies before conferring with Petraeus and other commanders in Iraq.

McCain, a strong supporter of the surge, has portrayed himself as having risked his political career to push for an unpopular strategy that has turned the Iraq war sharply back in favor of the United States.

The Arizona senator has said it is essential to win the war in Iraq; he has said he would withdraw U.S. troops in accordance with that goal and with the conditions in the theater of war.

Obama was asked yesterday if the improvements in Iraq have proved him wrong in opposing Mr. Bush’s surge strategy.

“No,” he replied, “because my assessment was always based on our larger strategic interests. Unless you get political cooperation from the Iraqis, you’re not going to have long-term stability. I have no doubt that if you put 30,000 additional troops in — that that’s going to have some effect on the violence.”

Obama said the Iraqi government has yet to deliver sufficient political progress. For example, he noted that Iraqi leaders have yet to produce a system to share the nation’s oil wealth fairly among its citizens — most of whom belong to one of several contesting religious and ethnic groups.

But Obama saw at least one sign of political progress in Iraq’s government. He said Maliki has “absolutely” grown in political stature since ordering attacks on Shiite militia in the the key southern city of Basra earlier this year. Obama said that, despite some mistakes in the launch of that operation, it has made progress against the Shiite groups, reassuring Iraq’s Sunni minority and raising Maliki’s political standing as he seeks to guide Iraq to provincial elections this year.

The fact that Maliki initiated the military action was in some ways more important than its flawed execution because it’s an example of Iraqi leadership taking the initiative.

Obama was asked to answer McCain’s criticism that his firm deadline for removing U.S. combat troops bespeaks an inflexibility that would be worrisome in a commander in chief.

Obama replied that he would remove U.S. troops in “careful, deliberate fashion.” He said his plan “is actually consistent with the pace of withdrawal” that the Iraqi government now seeks. “And if you talk to General Petraeus, he’s acknowledged that if his strategy is working, we should be able to draw down troops.”

Obama charged that it is McCain who is inflexible. “John McCain believes that we should just keep on staying” in Iraq, he said.

Reed was asked whether Petraeus embraced Obama’s 16-month troop-withdrawal schedule. Reed did not directly answer that question. Nor has Reed — who has generally tried to push for troop withdrawals without hard deadlines — explicitly endorsed Obama’s troop-withdrawal timetable.

Reed said that during their five days together on the road, he has been impressed with Obama’s sound understanding of the geopolitical situation and of where American strategic interests lie in Iraq and Afghanistan.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com