The centerpiece of the unprecedented Rice-Rumsfeld joint visit was their 
first meeting with Nouri al-Maliki, selected last week as a compromise candidate 
for prime minister to break the sectarian logjam. He has a month to form a new 
government that the United States hopes will pave the way for eventual U.S. 
withdrawal. 
Al-Maliki was largely unknown outside Iraq before his selection, but both 
Rice and Rumsfeld said they found him impressive and focused on fixing Iraq's 
grinding problems. 
Al-Maliki opposed both Saddam Hussein and the U.S.-led invasion that 
overthrew the dictator more than three years ago. He has been described as a 
hardline Shiite partisan and by U.S. officials as an Iraqi patriot who stood up 
to attempted political meddling by neighboring Iran. 
"We know that he's not always agreed with us, or we with him," Rice said. 
"But he is somebody who has always had the interests of the Iraqis at heart and 
who has worked hard on their behalf." 
Neither Rice nor Rumsfeld had met Al-Maliki before Wednesday's joint session 
with him. Rice met with him a second time privately. 
Rice said the United States must be ready to help the new leaders take 
advantage of the fresh opportunity the new government represents. Many of her 
sessions with Rumsfeld focused on buttressing the government in its first 100 
days. 
She left behind a senior aide, Jim Wilkinson, to help al-Maliki organize his 
staff and operations. 
The secrecy surrounding the two leaders' visit and the omnipresent security 
precautions inside the fortified U.S. government complex underscored the dangers 
and difficulties the Iraqi leaders inherit. 
Shortly before they left the country Thursday, a sister of Iraq's new Sunni 
vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, was killed in a drive-by shooting as she was 
leaving her home in southwestern Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamel Hussein. 
It was the second killing in al-Hashimi's immediate family in two weeks. On 
April 13, his brother, Mahmoud al-Hashimi, was shot dead while driving in a 
mostly Shiite area of east Baghdad. 
Rumsfeld was headed back to Washington early Thursday and Rice was flying to 
Bulgaria for a gathering of NATO foreign ministers. 
Two-thirds of Americans now say the disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq in 
AP-Ipsos polling earlier this month. 
The administration remains under election-year pressure from the public and 
many in Congress to draw down its forces there, but Rumsfeld said Iraqi leaders 
did not raise the subject with him. 
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military commander, said selection of 
government leaders marked a major step toward creating conditions that could 
allow a partial withdrawal. 
"I'm still on my general timeline" for a possible withdrawal, he told 
reporters after meeting with Rumsfeld. 
Casey used no figures. There are about 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and 
military officials have spoken before of their hopes of reducing that number 
below 100,000 by the end of the year if the insurgency does not grow worse and 
if Iraq makes continued progress on political and security fronts. 
Bush said last month that some U.S. troops could stay in Iraq for 
years.