(20 Mar 2017) President Donald Trump is preparing for his first meeting with Iraq's prime minister as the American leader shapes his policy for defeating the Islamic State group.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's first visit to Washington since Trump's inauguration comes before Trump hosts a 68-nation meeting geared toward advancing the fight against the IS militant group.
Al-Abadi arrives having already won one concession from Trump administration.
The temporary ban on travellers from seven countries was rewritten to exclude Iraq, after several Iraqi officials and U.S. lawmakers objected to Iraq's inclusion, noting the risks and sacrifices that many Iraqis made assisting U.S. troops during and after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
The rewritten ban has been blocked by U.S. courts.
Trump may also find himself having to explain comments he made on his first day in office, when he vowed that the U.S. may get a chance to take Iraq's oil as compensation for its efforts there - something al-Abadi, and later, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, rebuffed.
Al-Abadi assumed power in 2014 after Iraq's longtime prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was pushed out by his party for his failures to cap the surge of IS fighters.
At one point, the radical Sunni Muslim group ruled about a third of Iraq.
The US has sent about 5,200 U.S. forces in Iraq, but that number doesn't include a few thousand forces who are there on temporary duty, or don't count in the military personnel accounting system for other reasons.
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