RIGA, LATVIA — President Bush, under pressure to find a new blueprint for Iraq, meets Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today in a high-stakes summit designed to find out how they can jointly chart a stable, peaceful future for the fragile government.

Bush was poised to sit down with al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, where the president was expected to ask the embattled Iraqi prime minister how best to train Iraqi forces faster so they can shoulder more responsibility for halting the sectarian violence and, specifically, mending a gaping Sunni-Shiite divide.

The two-day summit was beginning even as a top White House adviser raised doubts about al-Maliki's ability to halt escalating sectarian violence.

Bush stood in silence at a NATO summit in this Baltic capital this morning, listening to a bugler play taps in honor of those fallen in service to the alliance, most recently in Afghanistan.

A few hours later, Bush was scheduled to be at Raghadan Palace, high on a hill in the Jordanian capital, grappling with the problems in Iraq where U.S. involvement now exceeds the length of America's participation in World War II.

"We will discuss the situation on the ground in his country, our ongoing efforts to transfer more responsibility to the Iraqi security forces, and the responsibility of other nations in the region to support the security and stability of Iraq," Bush said Tuesday at the NATO summit.

"We'll continue to be flexible, and we'll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there's one thing I'm not going to do: I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

SELCUK, Turkey — Pope Benedict XVI today honored the memory of a Roman Catholic priest who was slain amid Muslim anger over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers.A Turkish teenager shot the priest in February as he knelt in prayer in his church in the Black Sea port of Trabzon. The attack was believed linked to the outrage over the cartoons. Two other Catholic priests also were attacked in Turkey this year."Let us sing joyfully, even when we're tested by difficulties and dangers as we have learned from the fine witness given by the Rev. Andrea Santoro, whom I am pleased to recall in this celebration," Benedict said at an outdoor Mass.On Tuesday, the first day of his trip to Turkey, the pope urged religious leaders of all faiths to "utterly refuse" to support any form of violence in the name of faith. On his first visit to a Muslim country, he expressed support for measures that Turkey has taken in its campaign to join the European Union.Benedict on today cited one of his predecessors, Pope John XXIII, who served as a papal diplomat in Turkey in the 1940s. He quoted him as saying, "I love the Turks. I appreciate the natural qualities of these people, who have their own place reserved in the march of civilization."While reaching out to the Turks and the larger Muslim world during his trip, Benedict also reached out to this country's Catholics, describing them as "the little flock" in largely Muslim Turkey. He said he wanted to "offer a word of encouragement and to manifest the affection of the whole church."