Biden Makes Unannounced Trip to Iraq, Is Welcomed By Mortar Fire

BAGHDAD, Sept. 15 -- Amid a brief rumble of mortar fire, Vice President Biden arrived here Tuesday for meetings with U.S. and Iraqi officials at a time when many Iraqis are pushing for a quick U.S. departure after more than six years of war.

Touching down in a C-17 cargo plane in a hot dusk, Biden then made his way by helicopter to the enormous new U.S. embassy, where he met Gen. Ray Odierno and Ambassador Christopher Hill, the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials here respectively.

In brief remarks afterward, Biden said he is here as an "interlocutor" to help Iraqi leaders resolve a number of pressing political issues, chief among them reaching agreement on a law establishing the rules for the scheduled January general election.

"They are ultimately all Iraqi decisions," Biden said.

Biden is running point on Iraq in the Obama administration, and this visit is his second in two months.

As he met with U.S. officials in the Green Zone, the fortified area where Iraqi ministries and the U.S. embassy sit, the shudder of nearby mortar fire disturbed the warm night. Warnings to take cover sounded throughout the compound. Biden was unharmed.

In making the announcement to seek cover, a soldier warned over the loudspeaker of an "indirect threat of fire," rather than a "threat of indirect fire." Odierno joked that the mistake proved such attacks, once commonplace, have grown rare.

The Obama administration is on a glide path toward departing Iraq by the end of 2011, and U.S. troops have already left major urban areas to the protection of Iraqi security forces, whose ability to maintain the relative peace is uncertain.

The challenge for U.S. diplomatic and military officials now is managing the withdrawal to ensure that it does not destabilize the country's still-halting political process or leave security vacuums where violence could resume.

There are roughly 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and many of them will remain in place through the scheduled January general elections.

A rapid withdrawal will begin immediately afterward to meet the August 2010 withdrawal deadline for U.S. combat troops agreed to by the Obama administration and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim now seeking new political alliances across sectarian lines.

Despite an impending request for additional troops for Afghanistan, Odierno said he has "not received one phone call" from anyone in the Obama administration urging him to change his withdrawal calculus in order to free up soldiers faster for the other conflict.