US: The United States and Britain piled pressure on Iraq's leaders yesterday to break their deadlock over a new government and prime minister as quickly as possible and to disband sectarian militias to avoid civil war.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, on the second day of a previously unannounced visit, told Iraqi leaders the lack of a government nearly four months after elections was undermining security.
"The Iraqi people are rightly demanding that they have a government after they braved the threats of terrorists to go to the polls and vote," Ms Rice told a joint news conference in the fortified Green Zone, the diplomatic and government centre.
"Indeed, the international partners, particularly the United States and Great Britain and others who have forces on the ground and have sacrificed here, have a deep desire and, I think, a right, to expect that this process will keep moving forward.
"It is, after all, the political process that will disable those who wish to engage in violence against the Iraqi people." Hours after Ms Rice and Mr Straw departed, a suicide bomber in a pickup truck attacked worshippers as they were leaving a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and wounding 41, Interior Ministry sources said. Some were critically wounded.
Washington fears the political vacuum will widen instability that is keeping US troops in the country. Three Marines and a sailor were killed in action in Iraq's western Anbar province on Sunday, the military said yesterday. The attack came after a US helicopter was shot down on Saturday, south of Baghdad. The two pilots were killed.
On Monday, Iraqi militants from the Rashedeen Army, who claimed the downing of a US helicopter, issued a video apparently showing parts of the wreckage, Al Jazeera television said. Al Jazeera said it could not authenticate the video.
It appeared to show part of the helicopter's fuselage and rotor lying in a field. Ms Rice demanded the disbanding of sectarian militias, which are tied to political parties. Some Shi'ite militias have been accused by Arab Sunnis of running death squads.
"You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," she said. Sectarian bloodshed has spiralled since a key Shi'ite shrine was bombed on February 22nd. Many Iraqis and foreign governments believe the only way to put a lid on the killings and avert civil war is a government grouping Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Hundreds have died since the bombing - two to three dozen mutilated corpses often turn up on the streets of the capital. Ms Rice and Mr Straw said foreign governments could not tell Iraqis who their next prime minister should be, but Iraq's international supporters must see progress. - (Reuters)