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US Secretary of State Makes Unannounced Visit to Iraq

By Edward Yeranian
Cairo
25 April 2009

Hillary Clinton is making her first visit to Baghdad Saturday as U.S. secretary of state. She met with U.S. military commanders, as well as top Iraqi leaders, to assess the war situation.

The unannounced visit comes on the heels of a wave of bloody suicide-bombings which threaten to destabilize the country, just weeks before U.S. troops are set to withdraw from major Iraqi cities by the end of June.

Her first stop, after being met by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill at Baghdad Airport, was the American Embassy, where she conferred with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.

Clinton told a town hall meeting, later, that she had come to "repeat the commitment" that the Obama Administration has previously given to the "people and nation of Iraq."

"We are committed to Iraq," she said. "We want to see a stable, sovereign, self-reliant Iraq, but we know we are coming into office when there is a transition underway. The prior administration agreed to withdraw our troops, and we support that. We want to do it in a responsible and careful way, and we also want to expand our work with the people and government of Iraq in other areas of concern, to help the government, to help the rule of law, to help the civil society."

The secretary of state went on to say that the Iraqi government has "come a long, long way," since the bitter sectarian violence of 2006, noting that the recent wave of suicide bombings was deplorable but much less intense than it once was.

Two suicide-bombings, Thursday, followed by two more suicide-bombings, Friday, left more than 150 people dead. The victims were mostly Shi'ite worshippers, in what appears to be a bid to stoke further sectarian warfare.

Clinton asserted that despite the loss of life from the suicide-bombings, such events are, according to her, a "signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction."

Iraqi Member of Parliament Haydar Abbadi noted that the recent campaign of violence represented a bid by Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party to rekindle violence, and by al-Qaida to prevent U.S. troops from withdrawing from Iraq.

He says that there are two factors in the surge in violence: first, Syrian-based elements in Saddam Hussein's former party are stepping up their campaign against the government, and secondly, al-Qaida elements are trying to stop American troops, from leaving Iraq, to go fight al Qaida in Afghanistan.

Iraqi Police Commander Jihad Jabari told Al-Iraqia TV that most of the recent suicide bombers were women and that his forces needed to take more precautions to prevent them from infiltrating large crowds to detonate their suicide-belts.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a gathering in Baghdad that economic development was also a key to staunching violence in Iraq.

He said that Iraq's adherence to the free market, as well as a fair social policy, will help put an end to violence… He added that the international community knows that economic development will eradicate terrorism and help us move from instability to peace.

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that the United States will withdraw all of its combat troops from Iraq by August, 2010. He also noted, however, that the next 18 months would be "critical."