Cheney, a chief architect 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 Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni Arab nationalist who stood in the parliamentary election and has spoken up for insurgent views, said Americans were not welcome in Iraq and should leave.

His comments echoed those of outspoken Shi?ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who accused the Americans Saturday of peddling their own agenda and disregarding Iraqis. In Washington, President George W. Bush was preparing to deliver a speech to hail the election as evidence the war is not lost and rule out a premature US withdrawal from Iraq. Germany?s foreign minister announced that a German woman kidnapped three weeks ago had been freed.

?I?m pleased to announce today, also on behalf of the German chancellor, that Mrs. Susanne Osthoff is no longer in the hands of the kidnappers. She is in the safe care of the German embassy in Baghdad,? Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. Several other Westerners are being held in Iraq, including four men working for a Christian aid group whose captors have threatened to kill them. The four ? two Canadians, a Briton and an American ? were seized in Baghdad last month.

A lull in violence around the largely peaceful election was shattered by a bomb in a Baghdad market on Sunday which killed five people and wounded at least seven. It exploded close to a Shi?ite mosque, although it was unclear if that was the target. A suicide bomber killed one police officer in an attack in Baghdad and another blew himself up near the capital when his explosive belt detonated prematurely.

The next administration

Police in the northern city of Kirkuk said two relatives of a local Kurdish political leader were shot dead on Saturday. In Baghdad, police said a member of the Badr Brigades, a militia loyal to Iraq?s biggest Shi?ite party, was killed on Saturday. The calls from Sadr and Mutlak for US troops to leave highlight 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.

While neither Sadr nor Mutlak will head the next government, both are influential within their respective communities. Mutlak, a wealthy businessman and head of a secular Sunni coalition, said US President George W. Bush was deluding himself if he believed the election was truly democratic.

He also said some of his candidates had been killed in the largely Shi?ite south of Iraq on election day. It was the first report of candidates being killed and could not be confirmed. ?Mr. President, do not believe that a real democratic process took place in Iraq,? he told a news conference, addressing Bush. ?If anyone tells you that, they are wrong.? The United States hopes the election, widely hailed as a success, will allow it to start pulling troops out of Iraq in significant numbers next year.

Faced with weak approval ratings, more than 2,100 US war dead and widespread anxiety about his Iraq policy, Bush will say in his prime-time Oval Office address that the election will not mean the end of violence, according to excerpts released by the White House.

?But it is the beginning of something new: constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East,? Bush will say.He will warn Americans of ?the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done (...) We would abandon our Iraqi friends ? and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word ... We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us ? and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before,? Bush will say.

Cheney, in Iraq for the first time in 14 years, visited the Taji military base just north of Baghdad and also addressed a rally of US troops, telling them ?the only way to lose this fight is to quit, and that is not an option.? The US military says it is making headway against the largely Sunni Arab insurgency which has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis in the past three years and made life dangerous and miserable for millions more.

As roads and borders reopened after a security lock-down for the poll, Iraqis returned to work. But they will have a long wait before seeing the shape of their new government. Results are not expected for around two weeks and will almost certainly be followed by horse-trading as the players in Iraq?s fragmented political landscape jockey for power. Iraq-based Western diplomats who followed the election say they expect the Shi?ite coalition which forms the backbone of the present government to again be the biggest bloc in the new assembly, although with a reduced number of seats.

Gideon LONG