Rice wraps up Middle East mission

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/6269671.stm

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has wrapped up a Mid-East tour aimed at winning support for US President George Bush's new Iraq strategy.

The eight Arab foreign ministers she spoke to issued a statement expressing support for the policy.

Ms Rice said there were concerns about whether the Iraqi government would take "an even-handed, non-sectarian path".

Earlier in her tour, Ms Rice held talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and announced a Mid-East summit.

Foreign ministers of six Gulf Arab states, Egypt and Jordan, concerned that chaos in Iraq could spread to the entire region, expressed their backing for the deployment of more than 20,000 extra US troops in Iraq.

"We expressed our desire to see the president's plan to reinforce American military presence in Baghdad as a vehicle... to stabilise Baghdad and prevent Iraq sliding into this ugly war, this civil war," Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah said.

Ms Rice said the plan was unlikely to end violence quickly.

"Violent people will always be able to kill innocent people and so, even with the new security plan... there is still going to be violence," she said.

"There are concerns about whether the [Iraqi PM Nouri] Maliki government is prepared to take an even-handed, non-sectarian path... But everybody wants to give this a chance. That is the position of the people in the region and there is in fact a burden on the Iraqi government to perform," she said after arriving in Kuwait.

While Arab leaders listened politely to Ms Rice's account of the new US strategy for Iraq, there is widespread scepticism as to whether Mr Maliki will deal even-handedly with Shia and Sunni militants - as the new strategy requires, says the BBC's Middle East analyst Roger Hardy.

And behind the newly-empowered Iraqi Shia, Arabs see the hand of Shia Iran.

Most Arab rulers are worried about Iran's new regional power and secretly wish it could be cut down to size - but not if that means military action by the United States or Israel, something they fear would further destabilise an already turbulent Middle East.