Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama and the Iraqi government found agreement in Baghdad on Monday for a 2010 withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, a timeline that continues to face criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain.

As Obama laid eyes on the Iraq war for the first time in more than two years, he emerged from a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, calling it "very constructive."

The trip follows Republican attempts to diminish Obama's foreign policy experience and a challenge from McCain, who complained that Obama was wrong to plan for troop withdrawal without having visited since January 2006. McCain has visited Iraq eight times since the war began. The Arizona senator has said Obama's foreign policy plans are naive and that he is untested.

After Obama sat down with al-Maliki in Baghdad's heavily protect Green Zone, government spokesman Ali al-Dabagh, who is very close to the Iraqi leader and sat in on the meeting, said Baghdad was not interested in troop withdrawal plans that arise out of the American presidential campaign but "in a real timetable the Iraqis have set."

When asked for a date, al-Dabagh said, "up to 2010."

That would match Obama's pledge to remove U.S. combat troops within 16 months of taking office and reinforces al-Maliki's reported support for that timetable in an interview published last week in Der Spiegel, a German magazine.

McCain contends American forces have turned the corner in Iraq after Gen. David Petraeus took charge of an additional 30,000 troops last year and revamped military strategy. McCain opposes setting a timetable for troop withdrawals and chided Obama's Iraq strategy yet again in a television interview Monday.

"This is the same strategy that he voted against, railed against. He was wrong about the surge. It is succeeding, and we are winning," McCain said in an interview with ABC television.

Obama arrived in Iraq from Afghanistan, where he said conditions were "precarious and urgent." The Illinois senator wants to send at least 7,000 more troops to the Central Asian country as they become available from the Iraq mission, and he has urged President Bush to put those forces in the pipeline at once.

With specifics of Obama's tour of the Iraq war front kept secret for security reasons, Obama arrived early Monday in a dusty haze kicked up by Baghdad's searing summer winds. He put down at the airport near sprawling Camp Victory, where the U.S. military maintains overall headquarters in the palaces and gardens that were once part of Saddam Hussein's presidential compound.

Obama and two other U.S. senators traveling with him made no public statements and moved directly into talks that included Petraeus.

In a CBS television interview from Kabul on Sunday, the 46-year-old first term senator said the Bush administration's decision to begin the Iraq war rather than to stay focused on fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was "one of the biggest mistakes we made strategically after" the Sept. 11 attacks.

As Bush and his military officials begin talking about further drawdowns of American forces in Iraq, Obama says it is time to make preparations to put more troops in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, Obama met U.S. troops, the nation's military leaders and President Hamid Karzai, whose spokesman said: "Sen. Obama conveyed ... that he is committed to supporting Afghanistan and to continue the war against terrorism with vigor."

After the two-hour session with Karzai, Obama made no public comment, but said in a written statement that the main purpose of the Afghan visit was to see U.S troops, thank them for their "extraordinary service" and let them know the United States is proud of them.

Obama said he and his colleagues were consulting about whether the U.S. has the right strategy and resources to defeat the resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda.

U.S. military officials say the number of attacks in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the U.S. forces in the country operate, has gone up by 40 percent so far in 2008, compared to the same period in 2007.

Usama bin Laden and his top associates are believed to be hiding in the rugged mountains along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and Obama has frequently claimed Pakistan is not doing enough to dislodge them from their sanctuary.

McCain, meanwhile scheduled a series of fundraising and campaign events in Maine and New York state on Monday, including a meeting with former President George H.W. Bush, father of the current American leader.

On Sunday the Republican candidate took in a New York Yankees baseball game Sunday along with the city's former mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.

Separately, influential conservative Christian leader James Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday that he has softened his stance against McCain, and could reverse his position and endorse him. Conservative Christians were instrumental in the election of Bush, but they have not rallied behind McCain.