Wed Apr 26, 2:43 PM ET
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed confidence that Iraq will form a national unity government but said the crucial issue of disarming Shiite militias would take time to solve.
On a surprise visit to Baghdad, the high-powered duo endorsed prime minister designate Jawad Maliki after meeting with the Shiite leader whom the Americans are hoping will be the one to rescue the country from the brink of civil war.
Maliki "was very focused and very clear that he understood his role and the role of the new government to really demonstrate it is a government of national unity in which all Iraqis could trust," Rice said at a news conference with Rumsfeld.
The US defence secretary said it was clear that after intensive discussions the Iraqis "have come to reasonable understandings of what the Iraqi people expect of them. I come away most encouraged by it."
A four-month deadlock over the prime minister's job was broken last week after the parliament's Shiite bloc nominated Maliki to head Iraq's first four-year post-Saddam Hussein government.
Despite the rush of optimism, however, Rice and Rumsfeld cautioned that dismantling Shiite militias, which are thought to have carried out executions of the country's former Sunni elite, would take time.
"I think it's too early for detailed discussions about how to go about this," Rice said referring to the militias.
"And after all, to underscore something Don said, Iraqis will have to determine how to do this given their circumstances and their capabilities," she said. "How we support them will be part of that discussion."
"My guess is that this will be as much a political process as anything else," Rumsfeld added.
US generals in Iraq however have said the new government must move aggressively against the militias.
"That to me is a problem that has got to get fixed," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the second-ranking US commander in Iraq, told reporters.
"We need a policy on militias, and a policy on weapons. That is something the government is going to tackle early."
Maliki has vowed to rein in the groups who are accused of killing Sunni Arabs in the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq. In turn, the Sunnis are blamed for dozens of attacks on Iraq's ascendent Shiite majority since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Maliki signaled Wednesday that the most sensitive portfolios -- interior and defense -- would go to independent lawmakers in a bid to avoid the controversies of the last government in which a Shiite with links to a powerful militia ran the interior ministry.
Still, it will be difficult for Maliki to tackle the militias as it will force him to confront key political allies like radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who boasts a thousands-strong private army that has been accused of murdering Sunnis.
Earlier Wednesday, Rice suggested a new video message from Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted on an Internet site late Tuesday, was released out of fear the Iraqis might finally be uniting across the sectarian divide.
"I think Zarqawi knows very well that... this government is representative of the broad Iraqi populace," Rice said.
"In fact the answer to the Zarqawi video is not anything that the US is saying, it is what the Iraqis are saying, it is having formed a government of national unity despite all the threats and all the violence."
Rumsfeld, under fire back home for his Iraq strategies, also met General George Casey, the head of US-led forces in Iraq and afterwards called on Iraq's new leaders to begin discussions on the future of the US military.
"The question of our forces' levels here will depend on conditions on the ground and discussions with the Iraqi government which will evolve over time," Rumsfeld told reporters.
He noted that the UN mandate for the multinational force in Iraq expires at the end of the year.
Casey said that by the end of the summer, 75 percent of Iraqi brigades will be in the lead in their areas of operations, rising to 80 percent by the end of the year.
He said he was still on his "general timeline" for recommending further reductions in the 132,000-strong US force in Iraq and added that the nomination of Maliki to form a new government after a protracted deadlock was a major step forward.
The pair's visit came as 14 people were killed in violence across Iraq Wednesday, including four in a roadside bombing near the restive city of Baquba.
In other developments, Maliki's office issued a statement late Wednesday saying the prime minister designate will now use his full birth name, Nuri al-Maliki, rather than the pseudonym, Jawad, which he took in exile during Saddam Hussein's regime.
His office said Maliki had identified himself as Jawad to prevent any harm from coming to his family under Saddam.