SUMMER DECAMP:

Rice joins Rumsfeld in surprise visit to praise Iraq progress (AP, 4/26/2006)

America's top two foreign policy officials flew unexpectedly into Iraq separately Wednesday in a strong show of support for the country's emerging new government. [...]

"We just want to make sure there are no seams between what we're doing politically and what we're doing militarily," Rice told reporter on her plane en route to Iraq. "Secretary Rumsfeld and I are going to be there together because a lot of the work that has to be done is at that juncture between political and military."

She and Rumsfeld planned to meet jointly with the newly designated prime minister and Rice scheduled a separate one-on-one meeting with him for later.

Casey did not elaborate on his timeline for reducing U.S. forces, but he has said in the past that a "fairly substantial" reduction could be made this year if the insurgency did not grow worse and if Iraq made continued progress on the political and security training fronts.

Asked whether the breakthrough agreements last weekend to name Jawad al-Maliki as prime minister and to fill six other top government posts moves U.S. officials closer to implementing the expected troop reductions this year, Casey replied, "It certainly is a major step in the process."