En route from Washington, Rumsfeld told reporters he would press the new Iraqi leadership to avoid delays on either the political or security front at a time when US troops are still being killed and wounded, and billions of US taxpayer dollars are being invested in rebuilding the country.
He would not discuss how soon the 140,000 US troops in Iraq could begin leaving.
In developments yesterday:
A US contractor was kidnapped in the Baghdad area, the latest in a string of abductions that has forced many foreigners to work there under armed guard. A US Embassy spokesman said the contractor, who was working on a reconstruction project, had been abducted around noon. He was not identified.
A pickup truck exploded near a US convoy as it patrolled a crowded market in the city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least three people and injuring more than 20 others. The blast occurred in a crowded market shortly before the nightly 8 p.m. curfew for cars. At least three people died and more than 20 were injured, mainly women and children, a hospital official said.
Three suicide bombers attacked a Marine outpost in western Iraq, wounding three Marines and three civilians in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda in Iraq, one of the country's most feared terror groups. The bombers tried to crash two cars and a firetruck into Camp Gannon in the western desert, but ''the drivers of the vehicles were stopped short of the camp by forces manning the checkpoints," a US military statement said.
About 500 members of Iraq's police and army swept through buildings in the central Rashid neighborhood of Baghdad, along with some 200 American soldiers, the US Army's Third Infantry Division said. Sixty-five suspected militants were detained. One Iraqi soldier was wounded, but no American casualties were reported in the largest joint US-Iraqi operation in Iraq's capital since the Third Infantry assumed responsibility for the city Feb. 27.
