United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Iraq's largely peaceful elections during a visit to Baghdad on Friday, but said the war-weary country had much more to do before it attains lasting stability. Ban, in an unannounced visit to Baghdad, where the United Nations suffered one of its greatest tragedies when its offices were blown up 5-1/2 years ago, met Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a minority Kurd, at his heavily fortified home.
"I believe you have come such a long way, but still you have to go a far way to say you will fully be able to enjoy genuine freedom and security and prosperity," said Ban, sitting in a gilded chair alongside a smiling Talabani.
Saturday's provincial elections in Iraq were the most peaceful since the US-led invasion in 2003 unleashed years of sectarian bloodshed and insurgency. Ban's last visit to Baghdad in March 2007 was jarred by a rocket that struck a building near where he and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were giving a news conference.
After meeting Talabani, Ban held talks with Maliki in the secured Green Zone in central Baghdad. "I'm here to convey best wishes from the United Nations for all the successful achievements you made during this last election ... Mabruk to all the Iraqi people and government," Ban said, using the Arabic word for "congratulations".
Preliminary results released on Thursday showed that allies of Maliki, whose law-and-order message resonated with voters, scored spectacular gains across Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim south. Elsewhere in the country, once dominant Sunni Arabs who boycotted Iraq's last provincial polls in 2005 regained political power in areas where their exclusion from local politics had fuelled resentment and a lingering insurgency.
Maliki said the election had altered Iraq's political map. "In some areas, the change was fundamental. The trend seen in this election was support for a nationalist course rather than sectarian or ethnic," Maliki said. But Iraqi security remains fragile.
Violence is still rife in parts of the country, such as the ethnically mixed city of Mosul in the north, a final urban haven for al Qaeda, and in Diyala province in the north-east, where a suicide bomber killed 15 people on Thursday.