The White House said on Wednesday that a steep spike in US deaths on Iraq, including 10 killed in a single day, would not lead to a reassessment of the US strategy there.
"The strategy is to win," spokesman Tony Snow said as US President George W. Bush travelled here to push his education policy. "As everybody says, correctly, we've got to win. And that comes at a cost."
"The president understands not only the difficulty of it, but he grieves for the people who have served and served with valor," said Snow, who told reporters that US forces "do believe in the mission."
Bush's Republican Party fears that the unpopular war may cost them control of the US Congress in November elections, and some have recently called for reassessing US strategy in Iraq.
Snow declined to say whether radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose forces have at times battled US troops and Iraqi soldiers, was an enemy or an ally, and flatly rejected talk of dividing Iraq into three regions.
"We have considered partition. Again, you consider every possible option. But we've also determined that it is not, for a series of reasons, a wise option for the stability of Iraq or for the region," he said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in a telephone conversation on Monday with Bush, "described partition as not only undermining the government, but also providing encouragement to terrorists," said the spokesman.
Asked whether Sadr was an enemy or a friend of the United States, Snow would only say that the firebrand cleric "is a factor in Iraq" and note "he's clearly a player in Iraq, and we hope he'll play a constructive role."
"If Moqtada al-Sadr wants to play a constructive role, is to make sure that -- to co-operate with Prime Minister Maliki in dealing with militias," said the spokesman.
Snow noted that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the highest Shia religious authorities in Iraq, and Maliki had each reached out to Sadr, and concluded "I think it's best left to them to figure out how best to deal with each other."
Sadr's movement has a vast military wing known as the Mahdi Army which is widely believed to be active in the spate of sectarian murders that leaves corpses scattered around the capital every morning.