Rice presses Iraqis to curb violence

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-10-06 09:40

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Iraqi leaders on Thursday to end their "political inaction" and put aside their differences to rein in sectarian violence that threatens to tear the country apart.


U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (L) greets Iraq President Jalal Talabani (R) at the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad October 5, 2006. Rice flew into Baghdad on Thursday for a surprise visit to press Iraqi leaders to resolve their differences and ease raging sectarian violence that has killed thousands.[Reuters]

Her surprise visit, during a Middle East tour, focused new attention on Iraq in the United States at a time when President George W. Bush's administration is on the defensive over the war in campaigning for next month's congressional elections.

Three years after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq is gripped by an unrelenting Sunni insurgency and sectarian killings that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led national unity government is struggling to contain.

The U.S. military and Iraqi government meanwhile denied reports that al Qaeda's leader in Iraq was killed in a raid on a safe house in western Iraq this week but said DNA tests would be conducted on bodies recovered from the scene to make sure.

Rice flew to Baghdad on an unannounced mission to meet the government she helped forge earlier this year but which has failed to deliver on promises of improved security and services.

Calling Maliki a "very good and strong prime minister", she delivered a double-edged message: that Bush remained committed to Iraq and its government but that Iraqi politicians had to move faster to resolve their differences, restore security, crack down on sectarian militias and provide basic services.

"Our role ... is to support all the parties and indeed to press all of the parties to work towards that resolution quickly, because obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated and is not one that is being helped by political inaction," she told reporters travelling with her as she flew to Baghdad.

Rice got a taste of Baghdad's chronic insecurity when her plane had to circle for about half an hour before landing because the airport was briefly closed due what a U.S. official called "indirect fire" - most likely mortar rounds.

A few hours later as she posed for pictures with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the lights briefly went out, a reminder of the blackouts that many Iraqis face.

Maliki on Monday unveiled a vague four-point deal with Sunni leaders and fellow Shi'ites that focuses on all-party local committees to bridge distrust between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and stem the violence that kills hundreds every week.

The Baghdad morgue said it had received 1,440 bodies in September, 85 percent of them victims of violence. This was a drop on the 1,550 it reported in August and the 1,815 in July.

The United Nations, which adds the morgue figures to the numbers of hospital deaths from the Health Ministry, has said 6,599 Iraqis were killed in July and August, 700 more than in the previous two months.

SENSE OF URGENCY

The U.S. has recently stepped up pressure on Maliki to stamp out militias blamed for many of the deaths and who Sunni leaders say often act in collusion with the Shi'ite-dominated police.

Maliki has vowed to disband the militias, some of which are tied to parties within his own government. But the difficulty of his task was underlined this week when the 8th National Police Brigade was pulled off the streets of the capital, some of its members accused of complicity in hit squad attacks.

"It ought to be very clear to everybody -- and I think it's especially clear to the Iraqi government -- that these are urgent matters that they have to take on with great urgency," Rice said.

In addition to her talks with Maliki and Talabani, Rice met members of Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish parties to press home her case that quick action was needed.

In a hint of the political pressure that Bush confronts over the Iraq war, a U.S. official said Rice stressed the need to change American perceptions that Iraq is mired in violence.

"A key requirement was for Iraqis to understand that when the American people look at Iraq, what they see are Iraqis killing Iraqis and that is not a good image," the senior State Department official said of the message Rice delivered.

"The world, the American people, need to see a different image. They need to see Iraqis working together and producing progress. This was a moment, a critical moment, for change," he added. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he described private conversations between Rice and the Iraqis.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said this week that the main threat to Iraq was now from sectarian violence and that the four-month-old national unity government had just two more months to start containing it.

Dismissing claims by Iraqi politicians that al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri and several associates were killed in a U.S. airstrike this week, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson said: "We believe he is still alive."

Masri, an Egyptian who is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died in a U.S. airstrike in June.

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