Visiting Rice lashes out at rebel cleric

BAGHDAD — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday.

Rice, in the Iraqi capital to tout security gains and what she calls an emerging political consensus, said al-Sadr is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Iran, where he is studying. Al-Sadr heads an unruly militia that was the main target of an Iraqi government assault in the oil-rich city of Basra last month, and his future role as a spoiler is an open question.

"I know he's sitting in Iran," Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr's latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. "I guess it's all-out war for anybody but him," Rice said. "I guess that's the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he's in Iran."

In a statement on his official Web site, al-Sadr said, "We denounce the visit of U.S. secretary, asking the government to ban the entrance of the terrorists' occupiers to our pure land."

Rice praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for confronting al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which had a choke hold on Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. The assault was al-Maliki's most decisive act by far against al-Sadr, a fellow Shiite and once a political patron. Kurdish and Sunni politicians, including a chief rival, have since rallied to al-Maliki. Fighting has continued in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, home to many of al-Sadr's followers.

"Some of the violence is a byproduct of a good decision" to take on militias and consolidate military power, Rice told reporters after a few hours of meetings and lunch with Iraqi leaders.

"That, I think, is what has given the sense to the Iraqis that they have a new opportunity, a window of opportunity," Rice said. "I don't think you would have seen this kind of unity" before.

Iraq's slow progress toward national political cohesion has been a frustration for the Bush administration and a source of outrage for critics of the war in Congress and elsewhere. President Bush's decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq last year was supposed to give the al-Maliki government the elbow room to make bargains and pass stalled national legislation. A burst of activity in recent months has helped, but Iraq is far behind the deadlines it and the U.S. had set.

Rice's brief heavily guarded visit was not announced in advance in keeping with security precautions adopted by all top U.S. officials.