IRAQ: US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice met Iraqi leaders yesterday to discuss the battle against an escalating insurgency, and authorities said they found the bodies of 34 men killed by guerrillas.
During her surprise visit, Ms Rice said she wanted to move ahead the political process and undercut the insurgency.
Guerrilla attacks have killed more than 400 people since the new cabinet was named on April 28th.
In talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, Ms Rice discussed speeding up the training of Iraqi forces to take on greater security duties. Guerrillas have concentrated recent car bombings and assassinations on Iraqi soldiers and police.
"We are fighting a very tough set of terrorists who are, it seems, determined to stop the progress of the Iraqi people," Ms Rice told a news conference with Mr Jaafari.
US national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Ms Rice's trip was part of a US effort to reach out to minority Sunni Muslims. Sunni Arabs dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein and make up the backbone of the insurgency.
"Obviously, she is going to continue that process, because that is really the way forward over the long term to bringing a conclusion to this terrorist effort," Mr Hadley told CNN.
Journalists travelling with Ms Rice were not made aware of any meetings with Sunni officials.
Ms Rice's visit came the same day that police found the handcuffed bodies of 13 people shot dead and left in a Baghdad garbage dump. The corpses of another 11 Iraqis, four of them beheaded, were found in Iskandariya, south of the capital in an area known as the "triangle of death". Ten Iraqi soldiers killed by insurgents were discovered on Saturday dumped in Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad, authorities said.
In east Baghdad, gunmen killed Qasim al-Gharrawi, a cleric who was the local representative of Iraq's most revered Shi'ite religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, officials said.
Killings of clerics, as well as suicide bomb attacks targeting Shi'ite Muslims, have fuelled fears that insurgents are trying to stoke civil war between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs who largely boycotted the January 30th elections.
Four police officers and two civilians were killed when two suicide bombers attacked the convoy of Raad Rashid, governor of Diyala province. He escaped unharmed. Ms Rice, the most senior US official to visit since Mr Jaafari formed his government, arrived in Arbil in northern Iraq to meet with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani before moving on to Baghdad.
Asked about the importance of drafting a new constitution by an August 15th deadline, Ms Rice said, "Things do not happen overnight. We have become very impatient people. Iraq is emerging from a long national nightmare of tyranny into freedom."
The new constitution to be drafted by Mr Jaafari's government and the National Assembly will be the basis for December elections. Mr Jaafari, a Shi'ite Islamist, said he wanted the drafting of the constitution to be "an inclusive process" that involved Sunni Arabs as much as possible.
"We will try to find ways to have a bigger Sunni participation," he said.
Ms Rice supported his position, telling CNN: "If there is to be a united Iraq in the future, then Sunnis have to be included in the processes going forward and just as they've been included in this government."
In Iraq's western Anbar province, where US troops launched a major operation over the past week to hunt insurgents near the Syrian border, the kidnapped provincial governor was set free by his captors, interior ministry officials said yesterday.
Raja Nawaf was kidnapped last week with four bodyguards. His captors demanded an end to the US operation. Iraqi insurgents have kidnapped two drivers, one of whom is Palestinian, and given their foreign employers 24 hours to stop operating in Iraq, Al Arabiya television said yesterday. - (Reuters)