The summit comes a day after US officials insisted Maliki was not offended by a critical White House memo and had not snubbed the US president in Amman.
AMMAN: US President George W Bush holds crunch talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan on Thursday on ways to try to stem sectarian carnage threatening to tear Iraq apart.
The summit comes a day after US officials insisted Maliki was not offended by a critical White House memo and had not snubbed the US president in Amman.
Bush had expected to meet Maliki on Wednesday, along with Jordan's King Abdullah, but found out on the way from Latvia where he attended a NATO summit that the Jordanians and Iraqis had decided a three-way gathering was unnecessary.
It had originally been billed as two days of meetings between Bush and Maliki aimed at strengthening the Iraqi leader as he grapples with an array of security, political and economic challenges gripping his country. In the end, Abdullah met both leaders separately.
US officials insisted the change had nothing to do with a memo by White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley that raised doubts about Maliki's ability to control the violence in Iraq.
White House spokesman Tony Snow rejected any suggestion the Wednesday meeting had been called off as a snub to Bush.
"If you want to take the temperature of the president and the prime minister you'll have an opportunity to see them tomorrow," Snow told reporters late on Wednesday.
The memo said the Iraqi leader appeared to have good intentions, "but the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into actions."
The memo, reported by The New York Times, was written after Hadley visited Iraq at the end of October.
Bush was informed on board Air Force One heading to Jordan that the Jordanians and Iraqis jointly decided they did not believe it was the best use of time to hold a trilateral meeting on Wednesday, and Bush agreed, a US official said.
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