Rice To Iraq: Settle Differences
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Baghdad on Thursday on an unannounced visit in which she was expected to meet with the prime minister for talks on reining in militias behind Iraq's sectarian violence.
U.S. spokesman Lou Fintor said Rice arrived by helicopter Thursday afternoon.
Rice, who has been on a tour of the Middle East this week, said she will tell leaders there that they have limited time to settle political differences and stop a wave of sectarian and insurgent violence.
"They don't have time for endless debate of these issues," Rice said in a news conference aboard her plane. "They have really got to move forward. That is one of the messages that I'll take."
In other developments:
Al-Maliki has announced a new plan this week aimed at uniting the sharply divided Shiite and Sunni parties behind the effort against sectarian violence. But vital details have yet to be worked out four days after the plan was announced.
Shiite militias with links to parties in the government have been blamed for widespread killing of Sunnis, who have complained that al-Maliki has not moved in force to stop the militias for fear of losing his allies' support. Sunnis say the Shiite-led security forces have been infiltrated by militias and allow — or even participate in — their attacks.
Shiite leaders, in turn, have accused Sunni parties of links to insurgents who have waged a deadly three-year campaign of violence.
Al-Maliki vowed in comments to the state al-Iraqiya television Thursday that the country is in the final stage of "confronting the security challenge" and that security would be achieved "within the two or three months to come."
Under the new security plan, Shiite and Sunni leaders will form joint local committees to direct the fight against sectarian violence on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level. But the sides have not yet worked out how the committees will work.
Reports that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, had been killed surfaced after a raid Tuesday that killed four terror suspects in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.
U.S. forces initially "thought there was a possibility al-Masri was among them," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said. But he said it did not appear the terror chief was killed.
"We have no reason to believe that we've killed al-Masri," Johnson told the Associated Press. "We are doing DNA testing to completely eliminate the possibility that this would be al-Masri, but we do not believe it is."
The statement came four days after Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said U.S. and Iraqi forces were closing in on al-Masri.
But chief U.S. military spokesman Maj. William B. Caldwell was more skeptical on Wednesday.
"I'd love to tell you we're going to get him tonight," he told reporters. "But, obviously, that's a very key, critical target for all of us operating here in Iraq. ... We feel very comfortable that we're continuing to move forward very deliberately in an effort to find him and kill or capture him."
Caldwell said a driver for al-Masri had been captured in a Sept. 28 raid in Baghdad, the second figure close to the al Qaeda in Iraq chief to be captured that month.
"We're obviously gleaning some key critical information from those individuals and others that have been picked up," he said, adding that 110 al Qaeda suspects were killed and 520 detained in September.
Johnson would not say what kind of a DNA sample existed that tests of the body might be compared to, but said "we're confident we will be make a positive I.D., or not, when the time comes."
The process "can take weeks to resolve," Johnson said.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh and Defense Ministry spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi expressed even more certainty that the dead man was not al-Masri.
"The body belonged to someone else," said al-Dabbagh, without identifying the slain militant. "The DNA check will be completed" to make sure, he said.