Rice Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq

BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 --

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced trip to Iraq Friday, where she encouraged the country's Sunni Arab minority to participate next month in elections that are intended to mark the final phase of Iraq's U.S.-designed political transition.

"If Iraq does not succeed and should Iraq become a place of despair, generations of Americans would also be condemned to fear," Rice said during her first stop in the northern city of Mosul. "So our fates and our futures are very much linked."

Rice's visit to heavily fortified and U.S.-controlled areas of Mosul and Baghdad, unpublicized in either city until after she landed for security reasons, reflects the Bush administration's deepening concern that Sunni political alienation will undermine the election -- and long-term prospects of establishing sufficient security for the United States to begin withdrawing troops next year.

In Baghdad, Rice stressed that differences based on "history or tradition, culture or ethnicity" can be strengths rather than weaknesses in building a democratic political process in Iraq. At a joint news conference with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, Rice said a country emerging from decades of tyranny and months of political violence has to "find the balance between reconciliation and justice."

The challenge of repairing Sunni-Shiite relations was underscored Thursday by a suicide bombing at a popular Baghdad restaurant that killed 35 people, many of whom were members of the capital's Shiite-dominated security services. Al Qaeda in Iraq asserted responsibility for the blast, saying in a posting on the Internet that it had targeted Shiites in retaliation for the killings of Sunnis in a U.S. and Iraqi military offensive in western Iraq.

"Who created the sectarian attitude in Iraq? The occupation," said Salih Mutlaq, a Sunni politician who did not attend any meetings with Rice. "We never heard of this before in our history. But it's good that Condoleezza Rice realizes sectarianism is not good for Iraq. All we want from them is fair and clean elections next month."

Another Sunni leader, Hussein Shukur Falluji, said Rice's visit was aimed more at shoring up flagging political support in the United States than forging consensus here. "This is all for the benefit of the American administration, to save their army from the Iraqi resistance strikes," he said.

In another reflection of the underlying sectarian tensions, Jafari was almost dismissive of a new Arab League effort to organize a national reconciliation conference before the Dec. 15 election. The prime minister, a member of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, rejected any prospect that participants could include either insurgents or former high-level members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, both of which are largely Sunni.

Only those who have been involved in the political process, whether in the National Assembly or writing the new constitution, should be included, he told reporters. Jafari said Iraq would continue its own efforts toward reconciliation after the election.

The proposal by the Arab League -- a body representing 22 Arab countries, the vast majority of which are Sunni-dominated -- is the only major regional effort to broker compromise and prevent the Iraqi insurgency from deteriorating further into civil war. Several Arab countries, particularly in the Persian Gulf, are concerned that Iraq's current, Shiite-led government represents a threat to the balance of sectarian power -- especially with Shiite-dominated Iran next door.

Rice said Washington supports regional efforts to bridge differences among Iraqis, but she, too, was notably cautious about which parties should be eligible to participate. She said all parties who attend should recognize that they are participating with an elected Iraqi government. "The lead on this really ought to be the Iraqi government," she added.

Rice's visit played out against a backdrop of continuing violence.

The U.S. military announced Friday that two soldiers died Thursday of wounds sustained from small-arms fire during fighting near Habbaniyah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad. And a Marine was killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in Karabilah, near the border with Syria, where U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in a large offensive to clear the border area of al Qaeda safe houses and smuggling networks.

In Baghdad, U.S. forces stormed a house Thursday that was sheltering a suicide bombing cell, killing seven suspected terrorists, including one in an explosive vest, and capturing five, the military reported Friday.

In Baquba, 25 miles north of the capital, three policemen were killed and two wounded when seven gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint, a police spokesman said.

At both her stops, Rice met Sunni Arab leaders -- two provincial leaders in Mosul and five in Baghdad.

Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, is the capital of northern Nineveh province, where the majority of voters last month rejected Iraq's new constitution and the newly trained police force disintegrated a year ago. Rice praised recent progress in establishing security and rebuilding the police. She met with Nineveh Gov. Duraid Kashmoula, a Sunni whose predecessor and cousin was assassinated last year.

Rice also inaugurated a new program designed to lessen the U.S. military profile in Mosul and shift much of the responsibility for reconstruction from the Pentagon to the State Department. An expected 16 Provincial Reconstruction Teams are expected to combine efforts by the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Justice Department and the Pentagon to rebuild everything from water and electricity to the court system.

"We are working to better unify our political and military activities in the field," Rice told provincial leaders and U.S. troops in Mosul gathered in a marble palace that was once home to Hussein's elder son Uday. Both of Hussein's sons were killed in a gun battle with U.S. troops in Mosul.

Col. Ken Lee, commander of the 122nd Rear Operation Center headquartered in Mosul, said that for some Iraqis, participation with programs associated with the U.S. military is "anathema" because it makes them appear to be partisan. Any hope of long-term success depends on attracting more local cooperation, he added, and many Iraqis they would much rather work with the State Department.

But in his Friday sermon at Um al-Qurra Mosque, the main Sunni mosque in Baghdad, Mahmoud Sumaidaee rejected any U.S. help. "Only the people of Iraq are capable of rebuilding it, not those who came from outside, those who brought us their misconceived democracy, which has brought us nothing but destruction, bloodshed, and chaos," he said. "What we want is a voice that unites Iraqis, whether they are from the south, the center, or the north, and deals with them on the basis of fairness, equality and justice."

Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.