The United States Vice-President, Dick Cheney, on Wednesday arrived in Baghdad, where aides said he would urge Iraqi politicians to step up their efforts to end the violence gripping the country.
His unannounced visit came as at least 19 people died in a suicide truck bombing outside the interior ministry in the northern city of Irbil.
Iraq will be the first stop on a week-long trip to the Middle East by Cheney, who is aiming to encourage reconciliation among rival Iraqi factions. He is also expected to visit the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
General David Petraeus, the leading US commander in the country, and the new US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, have given the vice-president a first-hand briefing on conditions in Iraq.
He is due to meet the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as well as the country’s Kurdish president and Sunni and Shia vice-presidents and the leaders of other influential factions and political organisations.
Aides said he would call for more work to overcome divisions and delays on the political front. A senior official told reporters that the message to Iraqi leaders would be: ”We’ve got to pull together. We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time.”
Cheney will also urge the Iraqi Parliament not to take a proposed two-month break. ”For the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month vacation in the middle of summer is impossible to understand,” Crocker, who travelled with the vice-president from Washington, said.
The US is sending 30 000 extra troops to Iraq in a last attempt to end the mounting threat of civil war.
Earlier this month, US President George Bush vetoed a Democratic funding Bill for Iraq that set a timetable for troop withdrawal, and the Pentagon has told 35 000 US troops that they could be needed in Iraq this autumn.
As news of Cheney’s visit was announced, Iraqi television showed footage of the badly damaged interior ministry building in Ibril.
Zariyan Othman, the Kurdish Health Minister, said 19 people were killed in the suicide blast, with 80 wounded. Hamza Ahmed, a spokesperson for the Irbil governor’s office, said the dead and injured included police and civilians.
Irbil, the capital of the Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, has been relatively calm despite the violence wracking much of the rest of the country.
The Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sunna, a Sunni Arab insurgent group, and Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish militant group with links to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The last major attack in Irbil happened in February 2004 when twin suicide bombings killed 109 people in two Kurdish political party offices. Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the blasts. – Guardian Unlimited Â