US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on Friday on a mission aimed at defusing a political crisis after hundreds of candidates allegedly linked to Saddam Hussein were barred from an election.
"Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq," US diplomatic official Philip Frayne told AFP, refusing to immediately provide any more details about the visit, which was not announced in advance for security reasons.
The White House said that Biden, President Barack Obama's pointman on the war-torn country, would "meet with Iraqi leaders, receive updates from US military and civilian leaders, and visit US troops."
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Biden would also meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, parliament speaker Iyad al-Samarrai, and other political leaders, it said in a statement.
"He will also meet the UN secretary general's special representative for Iraq, Ad Melkert, to discuss US and international effort to support Iraq, with a focus on the national election scheduled for March 2010."
A blacklist of more than 500 election candidates said to have links with Saddam Hussein's regime has stoked tensions between the Shiite majority now leading the government and the Sunni Arab former elite.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari described Biden's visit as a mission "to salvage the electoral process" ahead of the March 7 general election.
"If there are delays in publishing the final candidates' list it will affect the US (withdrawal) process also," Zebari told AFP.
"We need to get the final list of candidates for the election from IHEC and if we don't it will have an impact on the timing of the election," Zebari added of the country's Independent High Electoral Commission.
The election row sparked a flurry of contacts in recent days by Biden aimed at brokering a compromise, notably through President Talabani, who is a Kurd.
