Rice, In Iraq, Urges Patience
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:
Rice was a chief architect of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as White House national security adviser during President George W. Bush's first term and she accompanied Bush on his own surprise visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day 2003.
Rice said she wanted to discuss the new government's upcoming tasks including writing a constitution, as well as addressing the country's security and infrastructure needs.
Rice told reporters the August deadline to write a federal constitution was imposed by the Iraqis, not the United States. The continuing political situation and security challenges in Baghdad have complicated the process and some in the Iraqi government now say that deadline may not be realistic.
In Baghdad she had a full schedule of meetings planned with top government officials, including Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari, Cabinet members and a group of deputy prime ministers.
The visit came as U.S. Marines wrapped up a weeklong campaign against insurgents along the Syrian border. It was the most intense fighting for U.S. forces in months.
"Yes, the insurgency is very violent, but you can beat insurgencies not just militarily," Rice told reporters. "You can beat them having a political alternative that is strong," and in which all Iraqis are invested, Rice said.
Rice was the first senior American official to visit the country since the new government was sworn in. Her trip was weeks in the planning, but kept secret, even from top State Department officials until the last minute.
Most Iraqi officials learned of the visit only hours before Rice landed in the region aboard a borrowed government plane, said a senior adviser to Rice, Jim Wilkinson
If the timing of Rice's trip underscored the importance U.S. officials place on the success of the new multiethnic government, the secrecy and security surrounding the visit were evidence that Iraq is a dangerous and unstable place two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Rice rejected any assertion that the tight security reflects poorly on the success of the U.S.-led effort to rebuild Iraq.
"It says there are terrorists and old Baathists who want to destroy the seeds of democracy in Iraq and the seeds of democracy in the Middle East, that's what it says," Rice said.
Rice had canceled an earlier planned trip when word got out and she traveled with a much smaller contingent than usual.
Iraq's new government has been three fractious months in the making, allowing the excitement and momentum from the successful January 30 elections to fizzle. The delay may have also emboldened militants.
A surge of militant attacks has killed at least 430 people across Iraq since April 28, when the country's first democratically elected government was announced. Many of those killed were Iraqi police and security forces and civilians.
"It's very hard what the Iraqis are being asked to do which is cast off years and years of tyranny and dictatorship and come to political unity in what is a very complicated place," Rice said.
"I think it's quite remarkable what they've done," so far, she said.
The partial Cabinet approved by members of Iraq's National Assembly left top posts reserved for Sunni Arabs, but they remain unfilled because of continuing political turmoil and ethnic rivalry. The Cabinet includes Ahmed Chalabi, the former Bush administration favorite who fell out with Washington before the January elections.