Rice, In Iraq, Urges Patience
Says Iraqis Can Overcome Surge Of Violence
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Video Rice Urges Patience In Iraq U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari on a heavily guarded surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday.
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Followers of the Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army carry one of the bodies of 13 blindfolded and bound men who were found shot multiple times in the head execution style in Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday. (AP)
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks at a press conference held with Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani during a surprise visit to Irbil in Kurdish northern Iraq on Sunday. (AP)
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"Obviously there is a security situation ... I want and have wanted to go to Iraq at the right time, and the right time is when they had a new government," Rice said en route to her first stop, the town of Salahuddin in Kurdish northern Iraq.
She flew immediately to the mountain stronghold of Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani in an Apache military helicopter under extremely heavy security. "There needs to continue to be some momentum in the political process," Rice said after her meeting with Barzani.
The one-day trip was Rice's first visit to Iraq as the top U.S. diplomat.
Rice then flew to Baghdad to meet with the senior leadership of Iraq's newly elected government to offer support and ask how the United States can be most useful, she said. Before those sessions, however, Rice addressed a gathering of uniformed troops and U.S. embassy employees in the fortified Green Zone.
"We are so grateful that there are Americans willing to sacrifice so the Middle East will be whole, and free and democratic and at peace," she told several hundred people packed into a former Republican Palace that is now part of the U.S. Embassy complex.
In other developments:
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