Rice makes surprise visit to Iraq
U.S. secretary of state urges leaders to get constitution done
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 Condoleezza Rice says Iraq is "the center" of building Mideast peace.
 About 400 Iraqis killed by insurgents in the past two weeks.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to Iraq Sunday, praising Iraqi authorities and U.S. troops amid an insurgency that is taking dozens of lives each week.
"Our promise to the Iraqi leadership is that the multinational forces are here to help Iraq defend itself until it can defend itself," Rice said at a joint news conference with Iraq's interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
"I assure you, we want it to be as soon as possible."
Earlier, Rice told reporters she came to stress to the Iraqi government that President Bush wants the timeline for drafting an Iraqi constitution to be met. The draft is set to be completed in August.
The trip was Rice's second to Iraq and her first as secretary of state. As national security adviser, she accompanied Bush on his surprise Thanksgiving visit in November 2003.
She told CNN that Sunday marked her first visit to the center of Baghdad.
"After spending every waking hour for quite a long time thinking about Iraq in one way or another, it has been really affirming of what the Iraqi people have achieved here," Rice said. "They still have a very tough road ahead; there's no doubt about it." (Full text)
After arriving Sunday, Rice took a U.S. military helicopter to Saladhin, the northern Iraqi mountain stronghold of Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani.
The two met to discuss the drafting of the new constitution, which is scheduled to be voted on by Iraqis in October ahead of the election of a permanent government by year's end.
"There needs to continue to be some momentum in the political process," Rice said.
After al-Jaafari met with Rice, the new prime minister referred to religious and cultural differences within the new government that are proving to be challenging.
"We talked about the importance of the political process, which should be inclusive," al-Jaafari said. "The constitutional process needs to be inclusive."
Al-Jaafari, a Shiite Arab, is the leader of the Dawa Party, one of the major movements in the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance.
The government's ethnic shape reflects the strong Shiite Arab and Kurdish showings in the January 30 election, with many of the positions allocated to officials from those groups.
Shiites received the largest number of picks, and Kurds the second-largest. Powerful under Saddam Hussein's rule, Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the polls in January, and their low turnout is reflected in the small number of Sunnis in the new government.
After months of negotiations, however, several available minister posts have been given to Sunnis.
"If there is to be a united Iraq in the future, then Sunnis have to be included in the processes going forward, and just as they've been included in this government," Rice told CNN.
Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Sheikh Qasim al-Ghiri -- an aide to Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani -- was gunned down Sunday morning in an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, Iraqi police said.
Police said al-Ghiri and his nephew, Hazim al-Ghiri, were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Nu'ayrirya-Baghdad Al-Jidida neighborhood.
Thought to be in his 70s, Sistani is considered by many to be the most revered and most influential leader among Iraq's 15 million Shiite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the country's population.
Rice: 'This war came to us'
Rice is the first senior foreign leader to visit Iraq since the interim government was created through January elections.
Reports suggest a top official from Iran -- Iraq's neighbor and enemy under Saddam's regime -- could be next.
The United States has openly called on Iran's theocratic leadership not to intervene in the development of the Iraqi government.
"I would hope that there will be good relations between Iran and Iraq," Rice told CNN. "But they need to be transparent, neighborly relations, not relations that to try somehow to have undue influence in the country."
"I have no belief that the Iraqis intend to trade the terrible, brutal yoke of Saddam Hussein ... to serve under the mullahs of Iran," she said.
Rice also reiterated the Bush administration's contention that building a democratic government in Iraq is central to winning the international battle against terrorism.
Part of that effort, she said, is creating "a Middle East in which the ideologies of hatred will not be so potent, in which freedom and liberty replace those ideologies of hatred."
Appearing Sunday in one of Saddam's former palaces, Rice received loud cheers and applause from U.S. troops and diplomats.
"I want you to keep focused on what you are doing here," Rice told them.
Although the U.S. decision to launch the war in 2003 was condemned in many nations and the original justification -- Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be based on flawed intelligence, Rice said, "This war came to us, no the other way around."
Referring to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Rice said, "The absence of freedom in the Middle East -- the freedom deficit -- is what produced the ideology of hatred that allowed them to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day."
The old policies of the United States and "the rest of the free world" allowed "ideologies of hatred" to fester, she said.
Offensive praised
In Washington, a top Republican who has at times criticized the Bush administration's handling of Iraq said he was feeling "guardedly optimistic."
"The key to success ... is whether we can reduce U.S. casualties and have the Iraqis take over," Sen. John McCain of Arizona told ABC's "This Week."
He said a weeklong offensive along the western border with Syria in Anbar province that ended Saturday was an "important" effort to rout out insurgents.
U.S. military officials said the operation left nine Marines and more than 125 insurgents dead. (Full story)
34 bodies found
The bodies of 34 people were found in three separate locations around Iraq this weekend, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In the town of Latifya, about 15 miles south of Baghdad, on Sunday, Iraqi police said they stopped two trucks on a road and found bodies of 11 Iraqi men inside.
The victims, laborers at a poultry farm, had been shot to death and four had been beheaded, police said.
The drivers of the trucks were arrested, police said.
In Baghdad, the bodies of 13 men who apparently had been tortured and shot to death were found in a garbage dump Sunday, Iraqi police said.
The bodies were dressed only in underwear and shirts and those with beards had been shaved, morgue officials said.
On Saturday, the bodies of 10 Iraqi soldiers were found in the Albu Ubaid section of Ramadi, in western Iraq, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.
Other developments
U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley said he could not confirm a report in Britain's Sunday Times that militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was brought to a hospital in Ramadi wounded and heavily bleeding. "We just don't know at this point," Hadley said on CNN's "Late Edition."Suicide bombers failed in an attempt Sunday morning to assassinate Raad Rashid, the governor of the Diyala province, his spokesman said. Five people were killed and 24 were wounded in an attack on his convoy in the city of Baquba. Among those killed were three Iraqi police officers and two Iraqi civilians, officials said.CNN's Kevin Flower, Enes Dulami and Kianne Sadeq contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
