Maliki Stresses Urgency In Arming Iraqi Forces

One Maliki aide said the prime minister wants "heavier weapons" and is concerned that Iraqi security forces are outgunned by militias and insurgents.

"Basically the level of weapons in the current army is really a disgrace," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. In many cases, gunmen are "definitely better armed" than the police and the army, the aide said.

Bush administration officials have long expressed concern in private about delivering military equipment to Iraq because of uncertainty that it would be kept out of the hands of militiamen, common criminals and insurgents.

The prime minister's critics in Iraq and Washington say he is unable to target the Shiite militias run by his political allies, but Wednesday he reiterated his commitment to defeating militants of any sect. Over the past few days, he said, his government had arrested 400 members of the Mahdi Army, the burgeoning Shiite militia led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a political supporter of Maliki, and staged a mission in the Shiite holy city of Karbala targeting people who attempted to assassinate a member of the provincial council. He said he has prohibited the Iraqi security forces from openly paying homage to sectarian leaders, such as Sadr, or from joining political parties.

"There will not be any house or party headquarters or any office that has impunity from security operations," he said.

A Sadr spokesman, Abdul Razak al-Nadawi, denied that 400 Mahdi Army members had been arrested and said he was unaware of an operation in Karbala.

Maliki addressed at length Bush's recent critical comments about Hussein's hanging, in which attendees shouted Sadr's name and told Hussein to "go to hell" while he stood at the gallows.

The execution, Maliki said, followed a legitimate trial and conviction -- for Hussein's role in the killing of 148 men and boys from a Shiite village in the 1980s -- and Hussein "was not subjected to any act of revenge, any physical attack, and it was a judicial process that ended with him being sentenced to death according to Iraqi law."

"I know President Bush and I know him as a strong person that does not get affected by the media pressure, but it seems the pressure has gone to a great extent that led to the president giving this statement," Maliki said.

Maliki spoke slowly and seriously for most of the conversation, but occasionally broke into a smile, such as when he was asked whether Bush needs him more than he needs Bush. "This is an evil question," he said, laughing.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was traveling with Rice in Europe on Wednesday, defended the secretary's comment about the Maliki administration. "It was a restatement of what others have said, including the president, underscoring the importance and urgency of the Iraqi government acting on behalf of the Iraqi people," he said.

A convoy carrying members of a U.S. democracy group was ambushed Wednesday in Baghdad, and four of the workers, including an American woman, were killed, an official with the group told the Associated Press.

Gunmen attacked the three-car convoy belonging to the National Democratic Institute, said Les Campbell, the group's Middle East director. Besides the American, a Hungarian, a Croat and an Iraqi were killed, he said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, a truck laden with explosives blew up outside a police station, killing 10 people, including four policemen, and wounding 45 others, according to the Kirkuk police chief. The blast damaged houses and destroyed cars, collapsed a mosque and took down a cellphone tower. There is growing conflict between ethnic Kurds and Turkmens in the city, and the police station was located in a predominantly Turkmen area.

Later in the day, a second car bomb exploded in Kirkuk outside a Kurdish political office.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a suicide attack near a busy restaurant in a market in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The blast killed 20 people and wounded 23 others, according to Brig. Gen. Abdullah Sami of the Interior Ministry.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington, staff writer Glenn Kessler traveling with Rice, and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.