BAGHDAD, Feb. 17 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Saturday to meet with Iraqi officials about the new security plan and to press the Shiite-led government to accelerate reconciliation, reconstruction and economic progress.
Iraqi officials in recent days have said the start of the new push for security in Baghdad has been a success, significantly reducing violence.
Ms. Rice, in a meeting with reporters after her talk with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders, said it was still too early to judge the effectiveness of the new plan. But she said she had pushed the Iraqis to think beyond short-term security, to how neighborhoods and Iraqi civil society could be rebuilt if sectarian violence between the ruling Shiites and the minority Sunnis subsided.
She said she had told Iraq’s leaders to quickly finish work on an oil law that would distribute revenues evenly among Iraq’s population. She also stressed the importance of creating a more balanced government by rehiring thousands of Sunni civil servants whom the Americans fired soon after the invasion in 2003, fearing they would remain loyal to Saddam Hussein.
She described both proposed moves as proxies for larger, still unanswered questions about whether Iraq could become a truly united country.
“I’m told that the oil law is almost complete.” she said. “I did say to my colleagues that I’ve heard it’s almost complete before, and this time I hope it really is complete — as in, complete — because people are looking to see some elements of national reconciliation put into place. It’s really critical.”
The Baghdad stop, tagged on to Ms. Rice’s scheduled trip to Israel, comes at a politically delicate time for the Bush administration. On Friday, a sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.
The rare wartime rebuke to the commander in chief — an act that is not binding but carries symbolic significance — was approved 246 to 182, with 17 Republicans breaking ranks to join all but 2 Democrats in supporting the resolution.
Ms. Rice said she used the restiveness in Washington to underline for Iraqi officials the spread of American frustration with Iraq’s lagging political and economic progress.
She said she had “made clear that some of the debate in Washington is, in fact, indicative of the concerns that the American people have about the prospects for success” if Iraq’s leaders did not quickly take actions to ensure longer-term stability.
Ms. Rice also addressed the administration’s recent claim that the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, had supplied Shiite militants in Iraq with deadly roadside bombs that had killed American troops. Echoing comments made by President Bush, Ms. Rice said she did not know whether the top levels of Iran’s government had approved delivering the weapons to Iraq. But she said she did not think that excused Iran.
“It is an activity that is done by an element of the Iranian government,” she said, “so I think the Iranian government has to be held accountable for it.”
Earlier Saturday, Ms. Rice addressed about 25o American soldiers and civilian State Department employees at a palace that doubles as the United States Embassy. Standing in a cavernous lounge, beside an American espresso bar and below gilded ceilings embossed with Mr. Hussein’s initials, she acknowledged criticism over the war in Congress.
“Some do not think this war was the right war to fight,” she said. “Some believe we in the administration haven’t fought it quite right.” But she also insisted that, despite those disagreements, both Democrats and Republicans appreciated the troops’ efforts.
“We can have our discussions and debates at home, but Americans want to win this war,” she said. “You’re in a noble cause.”
Ms. Rice also said that Iraq’s struggles for stability were not dissimilar from what the United States once experienced: “Perfect union was imperfect at its start.”
She said Iraq’s situation was similar, and she cautioned against viewing Iraqis as less competent at building a democracy. “Usually people think of war and peace,” she said. “We all know that, in between, there’s a lot.”
Ms. Rice’s visit came on a day of relative calm in Baghdad, but in the northern city of Kirkuk, two car bombs near the offices of a Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killed nine people.
After her day in Baghdad, Ms. Rice traveled to Israel for a meeting on Monday between the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.