New U.S. Embassy Dedicated in Baghdad as Bombs Explode Elsewhere

After months of delays and other problems, the enormous new United States Embassy compound here was dedicated on Monday by Iraqi and American officials, who declared the start of a new era for relations. But while the celebrators reflected on what they called the accomplishments of the past six years and the challenges ahead, a wave of bombs went off across Baghdad, leaving at least six dead and dozens wounded. The bombs came a day after a suicide attack killed more than 40 people at a Shiite shrine in central Baghdad. The hourlong ceremony, held outside on a sunny and unseasonably warm morning, was attended by Iraqi ministers and senior military officers as well as American military and diplomatic officials. The speakers included Ryan C. Crocker, the ambassador; Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq; and John D. Negroponte, the first ambassador to Iraq after the invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein. Mr. Negroponte is now the deputy secretary of state. Security in Baghdad and across Iraq has improved enormously in the nearly two years since Mr. Crocker was confirmed as ambassador, but many Iraqis, including Iraqi political leaders, worry that the current situation is merely a lull given the still-fractious political system. Mr. Crocker acknowledged the troubles since the invasion but said the implementation of the security agreement between Iraq and the United States, which went into effect on Jan. 1, was a sign of Iraq's progress toward being a stable, sovereign state. Of the 120 years since the United States first established a presence in Baghdad, Mr. Crocker said, "no period has been more intense, more challenging or more promising than that since April 2003. And of that period, perhaps no single week has been more important than this past one." On Dec. 31, the embassy officially moved out of the Republican Palace, the jewel of Baghdad's government buildings and the headquarters of the American presence in Iraq since shortly after the invasion. For months, officials and members of the support staff, adding up to 1,200 people in all, have been gradually moving into the new embassy, America's largest in the world. The Congressional Research Service said the final cost was $736 million; the original estimate was $592 million. Though its construction also was troubled by long delays, structural problems and allegations of abusive labor practices, the embassy, a campus of adobe-colored buildings on 104 acres, has a far more functional appearance than the lavish palace. Surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wires, the compound is less than a mile from the Republican Palace in the Green Zone, which was handed over to Iraqi control on Jan. 1 as part of the security agreement. Several hours after the ceremony came the deadliest explosion of the day, in which four people were killed, in the southeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora. Officers from Iraq's national police were trying to dispose of a bomb when it was set off by remote control, said an official at the hospital where several of the wounded were taken.