US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Iraq yesterday for meetings with the Iraqi government, which last week passed the first in a series of long-awaited laws aimed at reconciling Iraqis, officials said.
Rice was sent to Baghdad on a mission to try to build on what US President George W. Bush's administration sees as progress on political reconciliation, the White House said.
Bush and Rice decided that she should break away from his visit to Saudi Arabia and make an unannounced stop in Iraq, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Riyadh.
Rice's trip followed the Iraqi parliament's long-awaited passage of a de-Baathification reform law earlier this week, seen as one the key steps needed to bridge the country's sectarian divide.
"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.
NEEDS
A day earlier, the Iraqi defense minister said his country would need foreign military help to defend its borders for another 10 years and would not be able to maintain internal security until 2012.
Abdul Qadir's remarks, in an interview with the New York Times posted on the newspaper's Internet site, could become an issue in the US presidential campaign.
"According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country," Qadir said.
"In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020," he said.
Bush has said US troops may have to stay in Iraq for years but most presidential candidates, especially Democrats, would like them to withdraw much faster.
Qadir is currently visiting the US. On his agenda is weapons acquisitions for the new, US-trained Iraqi army. The Times said that these included ground vehicles, helicopters, tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers.
The US disbanded the country's previous armed forces built by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The US and Iraq have said they would negotiate a formal agreement governing the legal status of US military forces in Iraq but talks have not yet formally begun.
ASSASSINATION
Meanwhile, gunmen assassinated a high-ranking Sunni judge as he headed to work in Baghdad on Monday, the latest of thousands of professionals killed in unsolved cases since 2003.
Appeals Court Judge Amir Jawdat al-Naeib was slain a week after police arrested a group of militants who specialized in intimidating or killing doctors, academics and judges, an Interior Ministry official said.
The aim of such attacks is to empty the country of professionals and scientists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Under Saddam's Sunni-led regime, members of the now-dissolved Baath party comprised much of Iraq's professional class, including senior bureaucrats who knew how to run ministries, university departments and state companies.
After his overthrow, senior Baathists were purged from their jobs, some were assassinated and many fled the country.
A key piece of legislation adopted on Sunday by the Iraqi parliament would allow thousands of low-ranking former Baathists to return to government jobs. But many former Baathists say they would not take such positions back, fearing Shiite death squads would hunt them down.
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