BBC: "The "reconciliation" plan announced on Sunday by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is part of a grand strategy by the Bush administration to stabilise Iraq - or to stabilise the perception of Iraq - in advance of the mid-term elections for Congress in November. Other parts of the plan are an insistence that democracy has arrived in Iraq and must be supported, a refusal to set any date or timetable for a total withdrawal of US troops (presented as a weakness), yet with a suggestion that a reduction might start soon as the effort to transfer responsibility to Iraqi forces gathers pace."