Prime minister says criticism by Bush, Rice likely aided terrorists
An American woman was killed in an ambush in the capital.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki voiced frustration with both President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, saying their recent criticism of the Iraqi government probably helped the "terrorists."
Al-Maliki, whose relationship with the United States is strained, was especially upset about Rice's comment last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when she said that al-Maliki's government is working on "borrowed time."
"Such statements give morale boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American administration, but I can tell you that they haven't defeated the Iraqi government," he said during a meeting with a handful of reporters.
The interview was al-Maliki's first public comments since Bush announced last week that he's sending 21,500 additional American troops to Iraq. The Times of London posted audio of the interview on its Web site. McClatchy Newspapers didn't take part in the interview.
Saddam's execution
Al-Maliki also criticized Bush for saying that the chaotic execution of Saddam Hussein looked like a "revenge killing" during an interview Tuesday with PBS' Jim Lehrer.
"I would like to correct President Bush that Saddam, that person, was not subjected to any act of revenge, any physical attack," al-Maliki said. "It was a judicial process that ended with him executed or sentenced to death according to Iraqi law, which sentences such criminals to death."
Al-Maliki said he thought Bush was responding to news media pressure. "I know President Bush and I know him as a strong person who does not get affected by the media pressure, but it seems that the pressure ... led to the president giving this statement."
Al-Maliki's relationship with the United States has been deteriorating for months over various issues, including control of the military forces in Iraq, the strategy for fighting the war and U.S. killings of Iraqi civilians.
More civilian deaths
Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market Wednesday, while gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of democracy workers in an ambush that took the lives of an American woman and three bodyguards.
An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the attack on the Western convoy took place in Yarmouk, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad.
The three-car convoy belonged to the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, according to Les Campbell, the not-for-profit group's Middle East director. He said the four dead included an American woman along with three security contractors -- a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi. Two others were wounded, one seriously, Campbell said by telephone from Washington. Their names were withheld until their families could be notified.