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BAGHDAD : US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Baghdad for talks as Iraqi forces and American troops conducted a major offensive against Al-Qaeda jihadists, officials said Saturday.
A US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad said the congresswoman from California, who is also the highest ranking Democrat, was in the Iraqi capital for discussions with US officials and the Iraqi government.
"She is in Baghdad for talks with US officials and representatives of the Iraqi government," spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo told AFP.
She had no details of the visit, including how long Pelosi, 67, would stay in Iraq where US forces having been battling insurgents since toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003. At least 4,078 American troops have since been killed in Iraq.
Pelosi's previously unannounced visit comes at a time when US President George W. Bush is also visiting the Middle East.
Bush, who had earlier been in Israel and Saudi Arabia, arrived in Egypt on Saturday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian leaders and was also due to meet Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Ahmed Saleh on Sunday.
Pelosi, who in November declared that US troops were torturing terror suspects despite denials by Bush, has said she hoped to get most of the 158,000 US troops deployed in Iraq out of the country by the end of this year.
In her previous visit to Baghdad in January 2007, Pelosi urged Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and US officials to reach political solutions rather than relying on a surge in US troops to end sectarian violence.
It was not clear with whom Pelosi planned talks during the current visit as Prime Minister Maliki and his top aides were away in Mosul, the northern city where troops were conducting a crackdown against Al-Qaeda.
However, Iraqi officials said Pelosi was likely to hold talks with Mahmud Mashhadani, the Speaker of the Iraqi parliament, who was in Baghdad.
In Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of Baghdad, the Iraqi army has rounded up 1,100 suspects in the latest operation against what the US military views as the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said there had been no clashes since the operation was launched on Wednesday. Of the 1,100 people arrested, 530 of them were on a wanted list.
The US military in a statement claimed that three of those arrested in Mosul were senior Al-Qaeda operatives.
"There are no clashes or killings," Askari said, adding that the Mosul crackdown codenamed "Mother of Two Springs" was continuing.
He said security forces had also recovered 1,400 kilos (3,080 pounds) of explosives, 45 missiles, 263 mortar bombs and 175 assorted weapons during the crackdown.
However there has been no response to a government offer of cash in exchange for heavy and medium weapons, officials said. Maliki on Friday announced a 10-day amnesty for those surrendering weaponry.
In February, Maliki announced plans for a decisive campaign against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He has said he now wants to replicate in Mosul the success his aides claimed in the main southern city of Basra where a crackdown against Shiite militias began on March 25.
That offensive sparked a widescale uprising across Shiite areas of Iraq, notably the teeming Baghdad slum district of Sadr City where hundreds have been killed in seven weeks of battles between militiamen and US troops.
A truce was agreed last Saturday between the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr and the government. The Shiite movement has voiced guarded optimism that it would hold.
Despite the truce, one woman was killed and two children were wounded in overnight violence, medics in Sadr City said. The US military said the area had been quiet overnight.
In the central Iraqi city of Baquba, a woman suicide bomber targeted a US-backed militia office on Saturday, killing one woman and wounding 16 other people, police and hospital sources said.
- AFP /ls
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