Rice, Straw visit Iraq

2006-04-02 10:23

Baghdad - US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and British foreign secretary Jack Straw arrived on Sunday in Baghdad on a visit which had been kept secret for security reasons, the Arab TV station Al-Arabiya reported.

The previously-unannounced visit came after two days of talks between the two in London, during which Rice had admitted that many tactical mistakes had been made in Iraq, but defended the overall US strategy as being right.

Ahead of their arrival, the US military in Baghdad reported that two of its soldiers were killed Saturday evening in an attack on their patrol in Baghdad. A further soldier had been killed on Friday.

Also on Saturday, a helicopter carrying multi-national coalition troops crashed southwest of Baghdad, the US military confirmed in a statement.

The aircraft was conducting a combat air patrol when the crash occurred about 17:30 (13:30 GMT). There were apparent fatalities among troops on board.

Witnesses said that clouds of smoke were seen in the sky around the area, and local inhabitants said there did not appear to be any survivors.

The US military issued a statement late Saturday that it would not comment on any casualties until the next of kin were notified, implying that there were deaths in the incident.

A local source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the helicopter was downed by fire in al-Youssifia, 56 kilometres south of Baghdad. It was the first loss of a US military helicopter in Iraq since January.

Rice, in an interview with BBC on Saturday, had admitted that "thousands" of tactical errors may have been made in the Iraq war.

But she defended the overall US strategy and said of the decision to invade Iraq that it was "not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein" and "it was not a mistake to unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East.

- SAPA