(Adds Hakim speech and Bush quote from interview) By Matt Spetalnick and Carol Giacomo WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The only way to stave off civil war in Iraq is for U.S. forces to strike harder against Sunni-led insurgents, a leading Shi'ite politician said on Monday after talks with President George W. Bush. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the biggest party in Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government, put the onus on Washington and its allies to take tougher action in Iraq, and denied that majority Shi'ites were stoking sectarian violence. White House talks with Hakim appeared to signal a more direct effort by Bush to stabilize Iraq. That is essential to any eventual drawdown of U.S. troops, as Bush awaited an influential panel's recommendations on how to shift course in the unpopular war. Bush told Hakim during the talks that he was not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq, and he later told Fox News "what Americans are trying to figure out is why Iraqis are killing Iraqis when you have a better future ahead." The meeting came just two days before Bush, under intense public pressure to overhaul his Iraq policy, was due to receive proposals from a bipartisan Iraq Study Group co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker. Bush told reporters he and Hakim talked about the need for "elected leaders and society leaders to reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy." Hakim heads the SCIRI movement, whose armed wing, the Badr Brigade, has been accused of running death squads targeting Iraqi Sunnis, an allegation he denied. In a speech to the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is coordinating work on the Baker group's report, Hakim called for stronger action by American-led forces against insurgents and other Sunni Islamists like al Qaeda. "The strikes they are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts," he said. "Eliminating the danger of civil war in Iraq could only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against Baathist terrorists (and other Islamists) in Iraq." "Otherwise we'll continue to witness massacres being committed every now and then against innocent Iraqis," he said. Experts say much of the recent violence has been part of a cycle of attacks between Shi'ites and minority Sunnis, who lost status when Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. CIVIL WAR? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Sunday Iraq was already in a civil war, something Bush has steadfastly denied. Annan also said in a BBC interview he agreed with Iraqis who believe life is worse now than it was under Saddam, an assessment rejected by the U.S. State Department. Hakim dismissed as impossible a suggestion that he might be indicted for war crimes like Saddam and said 60 of his relatives had been killed during Saddam's rule. He said the idea of civil war in Iraq scares Shi'ites as much as anyone. But he warned that Shi'ite religious authorities "might lose their ability to calm down the reaction to the continuous sectarian cleansing attacks." Bush praised Hakim for his "strong position against the murder of innocent life." But he also said: "I told him that we're not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq." Possibly mindful of Washington's concerns about SCIRI's ties to U.S. foes in Shi'ite Iran, Hakim told Bush that Iraq's neighbors should not become involved in the country's affairs. SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was founded in Iran in 1982 and is part of the United Alliance, a grouping of Shi'ite Islamist parties that won a near majority in the Iraqi parliament elected in December. Minority Sunnis have accused SCIRI's militia of carrying out assassinations. The White House meeting with Hakim is seen by some analysts as a sign that Bush, whose Republicans suffered heavy election losses last month partly due to public dismay over the war, is delving deeper into the quest for a new strategy for Iraq. Bush met Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan last week and they agreed to speed up training for Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops.
