Iraq's new prime minister has urged the nation to unite against a terrorist threat that he says poses the major risk to its independence and prosperity.
As Iyad Allawi made his first televised address on Friday the US military announced the capture of a suspected lieutenant of al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who they say is organising murder and sabotage to undermine the US-backed administration.
The most active of the sectarian militias that Allawi vowed to disband struck a truce deal in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf with US forces, who agreed to pull back from sacred sites as radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army did likewise.
As Iraq appointed an electoral commission to organise its first free elections in January - the key task of Allawi's interim government - yet more of the violence that threatens to derail the process struck in Baghdad.
Four US soldiers were killed, bringing the total combat death toll to 600.
"Defeating terrorism and terror is the duty of all Iraqis. I call on you to stand up against these criminal killers and to cooperate with state institutions to destroy this evil," Allawi, a former CIA-backed exiled opposition leader said in a 15-minute address on the US-funded Iraqiya local television channel.
It is not clear how many of Iraq's 26 million people saw it but Allawi was at pains to identify their concerns - lack of jobs and services like power, and the US military presence.
"We Iraqis can never accept occupation," he said, but if US forces were driven out now it would be a "great disaster".
Adopting a professorial air as he looked over the top of his spectacles, he stressed that the way to achieve true sovereignty and economic growth was not by fighting the Americans or Iraqi police but uniting to halt the violence and sabotage.
"These cowardly terrorist acts have delayed and will delay the return of normal life and destroy the national economy and the souls of the people and their daily bread."