US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said after meeting Iraq's new prime minister-designate today they were impressed with his commitment to unite the country.
US President George W. Bush, who has called for a national unity government in Baghdad to help defeat a Sunni Arab insurgency and end sectarian blood-letting, dispatched Rice and Rumsfeld to Baghdad to hold talks with Nuri al-Maliki.
"He was really impressive," Ms Rice told reporters after the meeting with the tough-talking Shia Islamist, nominated last week at the end of four months of political paralysis in Baghdad over the formation of a new government after December elections.
Ms Rice returned to Baghdad just three weeks after a visit that heralded the eventual removal of Maliki's predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was rejected by Sunni and Kurdish parties.
Mr Maliki was Mr Jaafari's spokesman and long a vocal advocate of Shia Islamist doctrine.
But Ms Rice, whose aides made little secret of their mistrust of Mr Jaafari and his ties to Shia Iran, praised Mr Maliki's commitment to unity in Iraq.
"He understood his role and the role of the new government to really demonstrate that it's a government of national unity in which all Iraqis could trust," said Ms Rice.
"We came expecting to say that the ministries also needed to be ministries of national unity, just like it was a government of national unity, only to hear him say it first. "I found it both refreshing and really heartening."
Mr Rumsfeld said none of the Iraqi leaders he and Rice met on Wednesday suggested they wanted fewer US troops in Iraq.
"The security situation needs to continue to improve," he said.
Neither Mr Rumsfeld nor the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, would be drawn into specifics of how many of the US troops might be withdrawn and when.
General Casey said Mr Maliki's appointment was a "major step" and that things were broadly on track for him to recommend some cutbacks.