5 years after saddam's fall, iraq still yearning for stability

Senator John McCain arrived in Iraq on Lord's Day on a trip that was billed as a visit by an functionary congressional deputation but that also served to promote his foreign policy certificate as he campaigns for the White House.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was scheduled to meet with functionary including the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and the senior American armed forces commander in the state, General David Petraeus.

He will also meet with the Iraqi prime curate, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said Yaseen Majid, a media advisor to Maliki.

Many Iraqi politicians are keeping close tabs on the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if McCain wins in Nov the American military will have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.

"This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the center East," said Wael Abdul Latif, an mugwump Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. "It's a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone."

Some Sunni Arabs were not so pleased by the visit.

"If the Republicans win the election, then nil will truly change in Iraq, and we need a big alteration to kick the occupiers out of the state," said Abu Elijah Muhammad, a 30-year-old barber shop owner in Samarra, north of Bagdad. "I would like to show him the schools and hospitals and how the kid and women suffer."

McCain was joined on the trip by Senators Joseph Lieberman, independent of Nutmeg State, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

McCain drew considerable criticism on a trip to Iraq last April for providing an appraisal of Iraq's security that at the time was more wellbeing than many Iraqi officials believed was appropriate. He later said that he had misspoken.

Thousands of Kurds gathered Sunday in the town of Halabja, in the northern uplands of Iraq, to mark the day 20 years ago when clouds of poison gas swept through the town, killing as many as 5,000 people, Erica Goode reported from Baghdad.

The chemical bombings, part of Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurds, began in the early evening of March 16, 1988, and continued through the night. On Sunday, ceremonies were held to commemorate the dead and to pay homage to the more than 200 living victims who suffer lingering effects from the poisons used in the bombings.