Amidst fresh bloodshed at an anti-American protest, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Wednesday.
Residents of Falluja, 30 miles outside Baghdad where 13 people were killed in a rally late on Monday night, said US troops shot dead two more people during a demonstration on Wednesday.
The bloodshed in Falluja provided a grim backdrop for the visit by Rumsfeld, who recorded a radio and television message saying US troops had no intention of taking over Iraq.
"Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you," he said. "We do not want to run it Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form an interim government and eventually a free Iraqi government -- a government of your choosing, a government that is of Iraqi design and Iraqi choice."
Rumsfeld, the most senior US official to visit Iraq since the war was launched on March 20, earlier hailed the removal of Saddam's 'brutal, vicious regime'.
"When one looks back on this effort, I think and pray that what will be significant is that a large number of human beings, intelligent and energetic, have been liberated," he said during a stop in the southern city of Basra.
"That's not only a good thing for them but it's a good thing for the region and the world," said Rumsfeld, who was last in Iraq 20 years ago as an envoy of president Ronald Reagan.
During that visit he held talks with Saddam as Washington sought to contain neighbouring Iran, which Iraq had invaded in 1980.
In Baghdad Rumsfeld held a meeting with Jay Garner, the retired general in charge of American efforts to rebuild the country and launch a democratic government.
Garner told reporters after the meeting that the media should concentrate less on anti-American protests and more on the way US forces had toppled Saddam with relatively little damage to Iraq's infrastructure.
"We ought to be beating our chests every day," he said. "We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans'."