Cheney makes surprise Iraq stop on regional tour

US Vice President Dick Cheney swept into Baghdad on an unannounced visit Monday, 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 and according to state television Al-Iraqiya, he then went into a meeting with 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 John McCain was meeting 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 and beyond, 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.

Those 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 October 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 year's end when the UN mandate for the US-led 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 8-9, which is expected to shape debate on withdrawal of the 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 November 4 elections, which will decide control of Congress and who takes the keys of the White House in January 2009.

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

Cheney made a similar trip in May 2007, 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.

Insurgents have stepped up attacks in Baghdad since February after a lull in violence since the middle of last year.

Beyond Iraq, the vice president's mission aimed to help revive the battered peace process and convince Arab allies like Saudi Arabia to do more to help curb regional powerhouse Iran's influence in Iraq.

Cheney was to push that staunch US ally to step up formal ties with the fledgling government in Iraq, a step the unnamed US official directly tied to efforts to contain regional powerhouse Iran.

The vice president was due to meet in Israel with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials and, separately, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad.

He will push both sides on the peace talks relaunched at a November US-hosted conference but which have faltered since amid an explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip and Israeli settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land.

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