The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Iraq's Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, a news report said Friday.

The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed, The Washington Post reported, quoting U.S. officials.

U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, the newspaper quoted sources familiar with the State Department proposal as saying.

The proposal has met serious resistance from both U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and military commanders in Iraq, who believe that intensive diplomatic efforts to bring Sunni insurgents into the political process are pivotal to stabilizing the war-ravaged country, the sources told the newspaper.

Khalilzad, who has spearheaded U.S. outreach to the Sunni leadership, has developed a long list of steps to accommodate Sunni concerns, from a possible amnesty to changes in the hydrocarbon law that distributes oil wealth, which is located mainly in Shiite and Kurdish regions.

Opponents of the proposal cite three dangers, which include that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife, and a decision to step back from reconciliation efforts would also be highly controversial among America's closest allies in the region, which are all Sunni governments, the report said.

But over 10 days of intense discussions recently among top policymakers in the White House review, State Department officials argued that intervening in Iraqi politics is increasingly counterproductive, particularly after elections for a permanent government last December.

Reconciliation, they argued, is now exceptionally unlikely and could actually jeopardize U.S. relations with Iraq's Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of the population, sources familiar with the debate were cited as saying.

Source: Xinhua