Cheney says U.S. will complete mission in Iraq

By Tabassum Zakaria

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (Reuters) - The United States intends to complete its mission in Iraq and will not allow the country to become a staging ground for attacks on Americans, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Tuesday.

"All Americans can be certain that we intend to complete the mission so that another generation of Americans does not have to come back here and do it again," Cheney told about 3,000 U.S. troops at Balad Air Base 70 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad.

The war in Iraq, which enters its sixth year this week, is deeply unpopular in the United States and has contributed to President George W. Bush's low popularity ratings. It is a major issue in the November U.S. presidential election.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are campaigning to bring U.S. troops home while the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, supports keeping high numbers of troops in Iraq until it is more stable.

Cheney, who arrived in Oman after visiting Iraq to assess the success of a U.S. troop build-up, on Monday called the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavor" and promised Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki unwavering U.S. support.

"We have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 sq km to become a staging ground for further attacks against Americans," Cheney, an architect of the 2003 invasion, told the soldiers at Balad.

The Bush administration has said that leaving Iraq too soon would undercut security gains and allow al Qaeda militants there to regroup, potentially posing a future threat to the United States.

OIL LAW

Before leaving for Gulf ally Oman, Cheney flew to Arbil, capital of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region, for talks with Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, whose fellow Kurds are holding up passage of a law on sharing Iraq's vast oil reserves.

Washington sees the oil law as crucial to fostering national reconciliation, but the law is stalled amid arguments over whether the central government or regional authorities should control production and exploration of oil fields.

"We are certainly counting on President Barzani's leadership to help us conclude a new strategic relationship between the United States and Iraq, as well as to pass crucial pieces of national legislation in the months ahead," Cheney said.

Cheney is touring the Middle East to raise concern about high oil prices, push for progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace-making and seek support for Iraq.

Cheney spent the night with his wife Lynne in a trailer at Balad, one of the largest U.S. air bases in Iraq. In the early hours there was a barrage of mortar and artillery fire lasting for several hours.

Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, told reporters traveling with him that U.S. troops on the base had launched pre-emptive fire against suspected enemy locations.

Balad Air Base is in the heart of Salahuddin, one of four northern provinces where U.S. and Iraqi forces have staged a series of offensives targeting Sunni Islamist al Qaeda in Iraq.

(Writing by Ross Colvin)