The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, expressed satisfaction yesterday at the progress made in Iraq but said the military was still far from any victory dance.
"Nobody in uniform is doing victory dances in the end zone," Petraeus told reporters traveling with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday on an unannounced visit to Iraq.
Gates said on Wednesday that the violence in Iraq had dropped to levels not seen since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the central town of Samarra that unleashed brutal Shiite and Sunni conflict nearly two years ago.
He said the reduction in violence meant the "goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq is within reach."
Petraeus, who in September announced to Congress the first possible elements of a US troop drawdown in Iraq, was more cautious yesterday.
"We work hard to build up on the progress made" but "we have to be careful not to feel too successful," he said.
"Certain days we certainly feel very good but there are still attacks. We have seen continued improvements," he said, adding that there was "much hard work still to be done and issues to be addressed."
Petraeus was due to meet later yesterday with Gates, who on the first day of his visit met top Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
On Wednesday car bombs struck four cities, killing at least 23 people. One of the bombs -- near a Shiite mosque in central Baghdad across the Tigris River from the "Green Zone" compound where Gates was meeting Iraqi officials -- killed 15 and wounded 35, making it the deadliest attack in the city since September.
An al-Qaeda-linked militant group issued a threat on the Internet earlier this week vowing to launch a wave of car bomb attacks and strikes on Iraqi security forces.
Petraeus said al-Qaeda was likely to attempt spectacular attacks in a last-ditch push against US and Iraqi forces.
"They have certainly demonstrated the continued ability to carry out car bomb attacks, suicide vest attacks, suicide car bomb attacks and so forth," he said.
Washington has also expressed frustration with what it regards as the slow pace of political efforts by Iraq's Shiite-led government to enact a series of measures aimed at reconciling Shiite and minority Sunni Arabs.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who visited Iraq last week, said he thought Iraqis were seizing the opportunity to make political gains.
"They're just doing it I think sometimes a little more slowly than we would wish. And we are impatient and it's hard," he told the Public Broadcasting Service's NewsHour program.
Iraqi leaders "understand their international support is not infinite in duration and that people who wish them well and who want to be supportive nonetheless can reasonably ask that they work on these things as rapidly as they possibly can," he said.
The countrywide decline in violence has been attributed to a "surge" of 30,000 additional US troops fully deployed since June, as well as agreements between US forces and Sunni Arab sheikhs who turned against al-Qaeda.
Washington is now paying some 50,000 mainly Sunni Arab men to conduct neighborhood patrols. The Shiite-led government said on Wednesday it plans to put 45,000 of them on its payroll by the middle of next year, raising the prospect of many former foes going to work for the authorities in Baghdad.
In August the main US adversary on the other side of Iraq's sectarian divide, Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, also declared a ceasefire of his Mehdi Army militia.
US defense officials say they believe Sadr's aim in declaring the truce was to weed criminal elements out of his group by revealing which splinter groups were not loyal to him.
Petraeus did not say whether he believed Sadr would extend the six-month ceasefire, which will expire early next year.
"We have had quite a bit of dialogue and discussion with a variety of interlocutors from [the] Sadr movement and those who talk to senior members, and Iraqi leaders needless to say would like to see the ceasefire continue as well," Petraeus said.
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