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Rice makes unannounced visit to Baghdad
15.1.2008
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January
15, 2008
BAGHDAD, -- Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice was in Baghdad on Tuesday to see top Iraqi
officials after Iraq's parliament passed the first
in a series of critical laws aimed at reconciling
warring Iraqis.
Rice went straight into a meeting with Shi'ite
Islamist Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki after
arriving, a U.S. embassy official said.
Washington wants Maliki's splintered government to
match recent security gains with progress on
political reconciliation between the majority
Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
The two sides have fought a bitter sectarian
conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis
since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Rice was due to hold a news conference with Foreign
Minister Hoshiyar Zebari later. |
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
She had been with U.S.
President George W. Bush on a Middle East tour
before it was decided she should break away for a
visit to Iraq while Bush went to Saudi Arabia, White
House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in
Riyadh.
"President Bush and Secretary Rice decided this
would be a good opportunity for the secretary to go
to Baghdad to build on progress made and to
encourage additional political reconciliation and
legislative action," Johndroe said.
Iraq's parliament voted on Saturday to let thousands
of members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party return to
government jobs, the first of a group of what
Washington has called benchmark reconciliation laws
to be passed.
The laws, which also include a revenue-sharing oil
law, are designed to draw Sunni Arabs, who were
dominant under Saddam but have since been
marginalized, back into the political process and
away from Iraq's bloody insurgency.
Bush has described passage of the law on former
Baathists as an important step towards
reconciliation. Maliki's government fractured last
year with the withdrawal of the main Sunni Arab bloc
as well as ministers loyal to anti-U.S. Shi'ite
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The stalled political progress came at a time when
significant security improvements were being made
after the U.S. military poured an extra 30,000 U.S.
troops into Iraq. Levels of violence are now down by
about 60 percent since June. Bush,www.ekurd.net
who was briefed in
Kuwait by U.S. commander in Iraq General David
Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker, said on
Saturday the new strategy had reversed a descent
into mayhem.
He said security gains were allowing some U.S.
troops to return home. The military plans to
withdraw more than 20,000 troops from Iraq by
mid-year.
Reuters
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