Rice, In Iraq, Urges Patience

(CBS/AP)  U.S. Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice, on a heavily guarded surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday, urged patience in the country's fragile new government and said Iraqis have made remarkable political progress that can overcome a recent surge of violence.

"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:

The Washington Post reports that most foreign insurgents in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia, with a significant minority from other countries on Iraq's borders, such as Syria and Kuwait. The Post culled their figures from lists of dead posted on radical Muslim Web sites.

The bodies of at least 30 men, including 10 Iraqi soldiers, were found shot execution-style in three separate locations across Iraq, while drive-by shootings and suicide bombings Sunday killed at least eight Iraqis, including a senior Industry Ministry official and a top Shiite cleric. Insurgents continued launching brazen attacks Sunday in a seemingly endless campaign apparently aimed at enflaming sectarian tensions, destabilizing Iraq's new government and forcing U.S.-led forces out of the country.

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