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Ex-Sec Of State Baker To Advise Bush On Iraq War -NYT

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III will advise President George W. Bush on Iraq, heading up a Congressionally mandated, bipartisan effort to generate new ideas on war there, the New York Times reported Monday.

Baker, a longtime confidant of the first President Bush with a close but complicated relationship with the current president, plans to travel to Baghdad and the region to meet with heads of state on a fact-finding mission that officials say was encouraged by both father and son and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Times reported.

The newspaper said the White House quietly designated Baker to the advisory role last month, the report said.

Baker declined to be interviewed for the story, but at a news conference this month, he said it was not his intention to engage in "hand-wringing about the past" but to focus on the path ahead "on a bipartisan basis in the hope that we can come up with some advice and insights that might be useful to the policy makers in Washington," the Times said.

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/cgi/NGoto/139482443?-3825