US Defence Secretary Robert Gates met Iraqi leaders on Saturday to tell them Washington was disappointed with their efforts to reconcile warring factions. Gates, who flew into Baghdad on Friday night, was briefed by US commanders on a US troop build-up intended to buy time for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government to reach a political accommodation with Sunni Arabs.
There were few details of Gates' meeting with Maliki and other Iraqi leaders but Gates told reporters travelling with him he would deliver a simple message "that our troops are buying them time to pursue reconciliation, that frankly we are disappointed with the progress so far".
General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said troops had launched offensives against Sunni al Qaeda hideouts around Baghdad in the past 24 hours to hunt car-bombers.
"For the first time we are really going to a couple of the key areas in the belts from which al Qaeda has sallied forth with car bombs, additional fighters and so forth," he said. In a brief statement, Maliki said there was a chance for Iraq to make national reconciliation a success, although he did not elaborate.
A four-day curfew in Baghdad has largely kept a lid on retaliatory attacks in the capital, although a number of Sunni mosques have been torched or blown up elsewhere. In the latest attack, a Sunni mosque in the southern Shia city of Basra was levelled in an explosion on Saturday, police said.
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