BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed for unity among Iraq’s religious factions as she made an unannounced and heavily guarded visit Friday to the country, including one of its most ethnically divided regions.

Rice made a personal appeal to Sunni Arabs to participate in new elections in December, but she sounded cool to an outside Arab attempt to foster political reconciliation. She also chided Iraq’s Arab neighbors for being slow to send ambassadors to post-Saddam Iraq.

“We do support the principles of democracy and support efforts to bridge the differences among Iraqis,” Rice said following a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

She also met behind closed doors in Baghdad with several prominent Sunni Arab leaders, including tribal leader and Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer.

Earlier, she met with Sunni and other leaders in the ethnically split northern city of Mosul, where Sunnis make up about 60 percent of the population.

Divisions “may be differences of history or tradition, culture or ethnicity, but in a democratic process these differences can be a strength rather than a handicap,” Rice said.

Sectarian and ethnic rivalries fuel the daily bloodshed in Iraq, and U.S. and Iraqi officials blame Sunnis for most of that violence. However, foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria and elsewhere are apparently responsible for some of the deadliest suicide attacks.

Elections set for Dec. 15 for a permanent government are the latest test of Iraq’s new representative system – and another marker toward the day when U.S. forces and advisers may be able to quit the country.

The Bush administration has refused to set a timetable for withdrawing, even as the third anniversary of the ouster of Saddam Hussein approaches and U.S. public support for the war drops.

“We will continue to assist the Iraqi people as long as the Iraqi people need and want the support,” Rice said.

Sunnis stripped of their political primacy under Hussein initially boycotted U.S.-backed efforts at establishing a new representative government in Iraq. They then voted in large numbers last month against a constitution many saw as sealing their fate as a minority out of power.

Rice said Sunni participation in the referendum is encouraging, even if they showed up only to vote against the charter.

The secrecy and high security surrounding Rice’s one-day visit was a reminder that Iraq is a long way from being a safe place for diplomats or ordinary citizens. Her stop was not part of her announced itinerary for a Middle East trip this week that includes stops in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank.

Before leaving the region Monday, Rice will add a short visit to Jordan to show solidarity with a U.S. ally after terror bombings Wednesday killed 57 people, including three Americans. She will meet with King Abdullah II, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

As has become customary for U.S. officials, Rice entered Baghdad by helicopter, not by car along an airport road notorious for insurgent attacks.

The U.S. military said Friday that three American troops were killed in western Iraq. Their deaths brought The Associated Press count of U.S. service members killed in Iraq since the war began to 2,059.

Arab diplomats have been particular targets for insurgents. On Friday, gunmen opened fire Embassy of Oman’s compound, killing two people and wounding two others, police and hospital officials said.

Al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq said it had abducted two Moroccan embassy employees who went missing this week. In July the same group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of two Algerian diplomats and the Egyptian chargDe d’affaires in Baghdad.

“I hope that the Arab states will support Iraq and condemn the terrorism that is killing innocent Iraqis, and establish diplomatic relations here with embassies and ambassadors,” Rice said. “There are many embassies and ambassadors here but not enough from the Arab world.”

The Arab League invited politicians from Iraq’s Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni and other factions to a preparatory meeting in Cairo on Nov. 19 and a larger conference sometime later.

Some Shiites have said they will boycott if members of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime or political base are included, and there are other controversies about who should attend.

“We would not accept that this conference becomes a platform for terrorists and for high-level Baathist officials of the former regime,” Jaafari said. “It should be big enough for all patriotic Iraqis who believe in the political process.”

Rice said overtures for unity should be Iraq’s to make.

“I would hope that those who participate in the Arab League conference would recognize they are participating with an Iraqi government that has been elected,” Rice said. “The lead on this really ought to be the Iraqi government.”

In Mosul, where voters in last month’s referendum on the national constitution rejected it, 55 percent to 45 percent, Rice tried to stress that political success in Iraq is in everyone’s interest.

“If Iraq does not succeed, and if Iraq becomes a place of despair, generations of Americans would also be condemned to fear,” Rice said after meeting with local politicians. “So our fates and our futures are very much linked.”

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