U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Baghdad Saturday morning on her first visit to the war-torn country since she took office, and after two days of suicide-bomb attacks in the country left more than 155 persons dead, reports say.
Her one-day visit was intended to show U.S. support for Iraq in the wake of a sudden bout of violence, and as U.S. forces start to leave, first from Iraq's cities by the end of June and from the country in general in two years, according to a time-table agreed upon with the Iraqi government.
Acknowledging that the attacks were worrisome, Clinton said she would seek a briefing on the security situation from the U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, in her first meeting Saturday.
She termed the latest eruption of violence as a desperate attempt of "rejectionists," who fear that the government will succeed in creating a united and peaceful Iraq. The suicide bombings, she said, are "in an unfortunately tragic way, a signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction."
However, she brushed aside suggestions that the attacks marked a return to the relentless sectarian violence that rocked Iraq in 2006, saying they did not signal that a new jihadist movement was taking root in Iraq, which could derail the progress the country has made in the last two years.
Stating that the Iraqi government had made impressive progress but there were people who did not want it to succeed, she said
the Obama administration was determined to help Iraq achieve "stability, sovereignty, and self-reliance," as the United States prepares to pull out the last of its troops by the end of 2011.
She said her trip was meant to send a clear signal to the Iraqi people that the U.S. was committed to helping them navigate the difficult transition period.
Besides meeting with General Odierno in Baghdad, Clinton was scheduled to meet a host of Iraqi leaders, including the president, Jalal Talabani; the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; and the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.
She will also be meeting with a group of Iraqi widows and holding a "town-hall" meeting with Iraqi students, as well as people from different civil society and interest groups.
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