United Nations gecretary general Ban Ki-moon praised Iraq's largely peaceful elections during a visit to Baghdad today, but said the war-weary country had much more to do before it attains lasting stability.
Mr Ban, in an unannounced visit to Baghdad, where the United Nations suffered offices were blown up in 2003, met Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a minority Kurd, at his heavily fortified home.
"I believe you have come such a long way, but still you have to go a far way to say you will fully be able to enjoy genuine freedom and security and prosperity," said Mr Ban, sitting in a gilded chair alongside a smiling Mr Talabani.
Mr Ban's second official visit to Baghdad followed a trip to Afghanistan and to India and Pakistan.
Last weekend's provincial elections in Iraq were the most peaceful since the US-led invasion in 2003 unleashed years of sectarian bloodshed and insurgency.
Mr Ban's last visit to Baghdad in March 2007 was jarred by a rocket that struck a building near where he and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki were giving a news conference.
After meeting Mr Talabani, Mr Ban held talks with MNr Maliki in the secured Green Zone in central Baghdad.
The United Nations operates under heavy security and maintains a relatively low profile in Iraq, a legacy of a truck bomb that destroyed its Baghdad headquarters in August 2003, killing UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and other staff.
The elections last week to select leaders in 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces were held without a single major militant attack, seen as a significant accomplishment in itself.
"I'm here to convey best wishes from the United Nations for all the successful achievements you made during this last election ... Mabruk to all the Iraqi people and government," Mr Ban said, using the Arabic word for "congratulations".
Preliminary results released yestdrday showed that allies of Mr Maliki, whose law-and-order message resonated with voters, scored spectacular gains across Iraq's Shia Muslim south.
Elsewhere in the country, once dominant Sunni Arabs who boycotted Iraq's last provincial polls in 2005 regained political power in areas where their exclusion from local politics had fuelled resentment and a lingering insurgency.
Mr Maliki said the election had altered Iraq's political map. "In some areas, the change was fundamental. The trend seen in this election was support for a nationalist course rather than sectarian or ethnic," he said.
But Iraqi security remains fragile. Violence is still rife in parts of the country, such as the ethnically mixed city of Mosul in the north, a final urban haven for al-Qaeda, and in Diyala province in the northeast, where a suicide bomber killed 15 people yesterday.