Rumsfeld arrives in Iraq, to discuss Baghdad security

BALAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
arrived in Iraq on Wednesday on a visit that comes amid waning
support in the United States for the war and questions about
when U.S. troops might start returning home.

Rumsfeld, whose visit follows stops in Afghanistan and
Tajikistan, has so far declined to comment on troop levels,
saying those decisions should be made with ground commanders.

He will discuss security in Baghdad as well as the training
and mix of Iraqi security forces.

The visit comes at a critical time, both for Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki’s U.S.-backed national unity government and for
the U.S. military in Iraq, which faces a series of inquiries in
which U.S. troops are suspected of killing civilians.

The latest case, the suspected rape and murder of a teenage
girl and her family by U.S. soldiers last month, outraged
Iraqis and prompted Maliki to call for a review of foreign
troops immunity from Iraq’s courts.

While Washington has resisted setting a timetable for
withdrawal of its 127,000 troops, many of President George W.
Bush’s Republican allies are anxious to show progress before
U.S. congressional elections in November.

But that could be complicated by a surge in sectarian
bloodletting between Iraq’s majority Shiites and minority
Sunnis that has killed scores in street fighting and
tit-for-tat attacks in Baghdad since Friday alone.

The violence has raised questions about the effectiveness
of the new Iraqi army, which Washington is training to take
over security so that it can begin pulling out its troops.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in a speech on
Tuesday that sectarian violence was now the biggest challenge
facing U.S. and Iraqi forces, overtaking the three-year-old
Sunni insurgency as the main source of instability.