US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Iraq today for the first time since the 2003 invasion as hardline leaders from both sides of the country's sectarian divide renewed calls for American troops to go home.
Mr Cheney, one of the chief architects of the war to oust Saddam Hussein, met Iraq's prime minister and president during his 8-hour visit, and hailed Thursday's election as "tremendous".
But outspoken Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose popular Islamist movement is a key component in the country's interim ruling coalition, and Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni Arab nationalist who has spoken up for the views of insurgents, said the Americans were not welcome in Iraq and should leave now.
A lull in violence around the largely peaceful vote was shattered by a bomb in a busy Baghdad market. It exploded close to a Shia mosque although it was unclear if that was the target.
Police said it killed five people but the Interior Ministry said just one person, a woman, died.
Sadr, who commands a powerful militia and devotional support from many young Shias, accused the United States of self-interest and caring nothing for the Iraqi people.
Mutlak said US President George W Bush was deluding himself if he believed the election was truly democratic, and also said some of his candidates had been killed in the largely Shia south of Iraq on election day.
While neither Sadr nor Mutlak will head the next government, both are influential within their respective communities, and their dissent highlights the size of the task facing the next administration, charged with keeping Iraq's rival sects and ethnic groups in check while building a stable democracy.