U.S. & World News

BAGHDAD (CBS) ― Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Iraq remains a dangerous place, a point underscored by a thunderous explosion that rattled windows in the U.S. Embassy where he spent most of the day.

After talks with Iraqi military and political officials, the vice president said Iraq's leaders seem to have a better sense now that they need to do more to reconcile sectarian and political differences. "I think they recognize it's in their interests as well as ours to make progress on the political front," Cheney said.

Cheney spoke less than an hour after an explosion could be heard in the U.S. Embassy. Windows rattled and reporters covering the vice president were briefly moved to a more secure area.

Said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride: "His meeting was not disturbed and he was not moved."

Asked about security in Baghdad, Cheney told reporters, "I have to reply on reports, because obviously I spent the day here basically in our embassy in the Green Zone." But he said that based on conversations he had throughout the day, Iraqi leaders felt that sectarian violence was "down fairly dramatically."

"I think everybody recognizes there still are some security problems, security threats, no question about it," Cheney said.

In Washington, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said President Bush wanted Cheney to travel to Baghdad to press upon Iraqi leaders the need to quickly pursue reconciliation measures and meet the benchmarks set by them and Washington.

"This gives an opportunity at a very high level for this message to be delivered," Bartlett said.

In Baghdad, the blast struck about 6:25 p.m. local time, just half an hour before Cheney's wrap-up news conference. It appeared to strike in the vicinity of the heavily fortified Green Zone, which contains the U.S. and British embassies and many Iraqi government buildings.

Meanwhile, about 200 supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in the southern city of Najaf to protest Cheney's visit. They carried banners reading: "The Iraq people reject Cheney's visit."

In other developments:

• A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding dozens, officials said. Kurdish officials blamed al Qaeda-linked insurgents for the first major attack in the regional capital in more than three years.

• Four Iraqi journalists were killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting near the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, police said. The four worked for the independent Raad media company, which publishes several weekly newspapers and monthly magazines that are generally pro-government and deal with politics, education and arts.

• Police found four decapitated heads in the Sabtiyah area north of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, health officials said Wednesday. The body of a security officer was also found shot in the head and chest in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, police said.

• The White House said President Bush would veto any bill drafted by House Democratic leaders that would fund the Iraq war only into the summer months.

• Some former top Iraq war commanders are taking the highly unusual step of appearing in TV ads that take on the president's policy, CBS News' Peter Maer reports. Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, a self-described lifelong Republican, said the U.S. is on a "slow grind to nowhere in an Iraq mired in civil war."

• A new report by the group Save the Children says Iraq's child mortality rate is up 150 percent since 1990. Mark Strassmann reports that thousands of Baghdad's children live on the streets, with little to protect them from the daily violence.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)