US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has flown into northern Iraq to make an appraisal of the training of Iraqi forces and to talk to US commanders.
Mr Rumsfeld began the previously unannounced trip visiting wounded US troops near the city of Mosul.
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters Mr Rumsfeld wanted to praise US and Iraq troops for their work during last month's election.
The trip came as an attack on a Baghdad bakery is said to have left nine dead.
The masked assailants are reported to have driven up in two cars and then burst into the building in a Shia dominated but mixed neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital.
'Hoping and praying'
The US defence secretary met members of the Iraqi security forces in Mosul and asked them about their job on election day.
"We're hoping and praying it will be a good country. It will be the Iraqi people who make it a good country," he told them.
Poll results are not expected for a few days, as a recount of the 30 January poll is under way.
The results had been due on Thursday, but 300 contentious ballot boxes need to be re-counted.
Partial results suggest the Shia United Iraqi Alliance list is in the lead, with a coalition of Kurdish parties in second place.
Mr Rumsfeld is the most senior US official to visit Iraq since the vote.
He flew in from Nice, France, where he held talks with Nato defence ministers.
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