US President George W. Bush vowed on Monday not to abandon Iraq and tried to counter fears among US citizens that the sectarian violence killing Iraqis and US troops was spiraling into civil war.
Bush, in Cleveland, Ohio, for one of a series of speeches meant to show he has a winning strategy three years to the day since the conflict began, insisted progress was being made but said it remained an uphill battle.
Bush fielded questions for nearly an hour at the City Club, a forum known for tough interrogations of world leaders.
PHOTO: AP
"In the face of continued reports about killings and reprisals, I understand how some Americans have had their confidence shaken," Bush said. "They wonder what I see that they don't."
The chaos in Iraq is a major factor in Bush's plunging ratings in opinion polls.
In Karbala, nearly 10,000 troops and police guarded hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims gathered for Arbain, an annual ritual banned under former president Saddam Hussein which Sunni Arab suicide bombers have targeted in the past.
A sea of black-clad pilgrims flailing themselves and carrying traditional black and green flags filled the city, mourning the dead in a 7th-century battle that sealed a historic schism in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites.
Twelve bodies were found on the streets of Baghdad on Monday. Hundreds of people have been killed -- many tortured, and shot and the bodies dumped in the capital -- since the bombing of a major Shiite mosque on Feb. 22.
A roadside bomb in the capital also killed three policemen and three prisoners they were escorting, Iraqi police said.
Despite urgent calls from Washington and other capitals for Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders to form a national unity government and avoid a dangerous power vacuum, senior leaders will not meet for the rest of the week.
Iraqi political parties remain deadlocked over who will lead the first full-term postwar Iraqi government three months after democratic polls meant to fulfill a main goal of the invasion.
Bush insisted progress was being made, citing the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar.
He said US and Iraqi forces had freed the town from the grip of al-Qaeda and insurgents and it was now "a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq."
US and Iraqi forces said Tal Afar was used as a conduit for smuggling equipment and foreign fighters from Syria on the way to cities across central Iraq.
Instead of celebrating the success of their three-year Iraq venture, Washington and its allies are on the defensive.
In London, British Defense Minister John Reid said, "The situation in Iraq is serious but it is not terminal. ... There is certainly nothing inevitable about a slide towards civil war."
"It is now crucial that they [Iraqi political and religious leaders] respond to the terrorists to divide them by uniting, in the speedy formation of a strong, representative government of national unity," Reid said.
A Sunni Arab insurgency against the interim Iraqi government also threatens to expand into bloody sectarian conflict.
Many Iraqis interviewed spoke gloomily of the future and questioned whether a unity government would even be able to arrest the growing rift between Shiites and Sunnis.
"We expected positive things after 35 years of dictatorship, but things moved in the opposite direction. Killings and destruction have prevailed," said Basra merchant Jassim Hamoud, as he joined pilgrims in Karbala.
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