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Cheney touts progress in Iraq

US Vice President Dick Cheney swept into Baghdad on an unannounced visit yesterday, looking to highlight security gains and promote elusive political progress days before the war enters its sixth year.

But soon after he arrived, two explosions rocked Baghdad, following a roadside bombing that killed a policeman, underscoring the violence that still grips the nation almost five years after the US-led invasion.

A security official said one of the blasts was caused by a mortar attack on the highly-fortified Green Zone, home of the US embassy and the seat of Iraqi government.

Cheney first held talks with the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador Ryan Crocker.

According to state television Al-Iraqiya, he then went into a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

He is due also to hold talks with other senior Iraqi political figures, including President Jalal Talabani.

In a separate mission, US Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain was scheduled to meet Iraqi leaders as well as US military officials to assess the success of the "surge" strategy that deployed more soldiers to Iraq, his aides said.

Cheney's unheralded visit marks the first stop on a nine-day tour of the Middle East, with scheduled landings in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank and Turkey.

A senior administration official told reporters accompanying Cheney that the vice president would tell the Iraqis "they need to continue to show some progress" on legislation seen as key to defusing sectarian strife.

The laws include an oil-revenue sharing measure; a law setting out provincial government powers; and one covering elections that the US official said were expected to take place on Oct. 1.

The official, who asked not to be named, said negotiations to forge an agreement governing long-term US-Iraq ties would be part of the talks five years after the March 20, 2003 US invasion.

The framework needs to be in place by yearend, when the UN mandate for the occupation ends, but "that conversation is really just beginning," the official said.

Cheney's talks with Crocker and Petraeus came as they prepared to make a progress report on the unpopular war to the US Congress on April 8 and April 9, which is expected to shape debate on withdrawal of some 158,000 US troops.

The US vice president's meetings with top Iraqi leaders, including Maliki and Talabani, comes as Washington pushes Baghdad to make more headway on the politics of national reconciliation.

US President George W. Bush's Republicans worry that the war could cost them the Nov. 4 elections, which will decide control of Congress and who takes the keys of the White House next January.

The conflict has claimed nearly 4,000 US lives and cost -- by the Pentagon's conservative estimate -- upwards of US$400 billion.

Cheney made a similar trip last May, months after Bush ordered some 30,000 more US soldiers to the strife-torn country to give what aides called "breathing space" to the government in Baghdad to enact difficult legislation aimed at fostering national reconciliation.

But Petraeus told the Washington Post last week that "no one" in the US and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in providing basic public services.
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