Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki said Monday that the government was ready to compromise to reach a security accord with the United States, saying the country still needs US troops despite the recent drop in violence. The speech came after a deadly spate of attacks took the lives of 35 Iraqis Sunday night.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Maliki said neither he nor Iraq's Parliament will accept any pact that falls short of the country's national interests. A poorly constructed plan would provoke so much discord inside Iraq that it could threaten his government's survival, he said.

Maliki said, however, that he was firmly committed to reaching an accord that would allow US troops to remain in the country beyond next year.

"We regard negotiating and reaching such an agreement as a national endeavor, a national mission, a historic one. It is a very important agreement that involves the stability and the security of the country and the existence of foreign troops. It has a historic dimension," he added.

Supporters of popular cleric Moqtada al-Sadr oppose the accord, arguing that US forces should leave Iraq as soon as possible. Neighboring Iran has also been speaking out vociferously against a long-term US presence in Iraq.

Maliki also noted with gratitude the high cost paid by American taxpayers and by the US military and the forces of other coalition members to secure Iraq's freedom and liberty over the past five years.

Maliki also said the government would be offering a compromise on the thorny issue of legal jurisdiction for US forces in the country involving some limited immunity for US forces.

"We have proposed that the legal jurisdiction would be ... with the Americans ... when the troops are performing military operations," he explained. "When they are not performing a military operation, they are outside their camps, the legal jurisdiction would be in the hands of the Iraqi judiciary."

"If we don't reach an agreement by January 1, 2009, the [US] troops will have to remain in their bases," Maliki added, "and then there should be a plan for a quick withdrawal.

Concomitant with Maliki's interview, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned rising officers Monday of the limits of US military power and encouraged them to be skeptical of technological solutions to complex wars.

In a speech on "hard power" at the National Defense University, Gates said the US military needed to strike a better balance between spending on hi-tech weaponry and meeting the requirements for fighting low-tech wars in broken states.

"Let's be honest with ourselves," he said in remarks prepared for delivery. "The most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland ... are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states."

He also has advocated greater reliance on "soft power," such as diplomacy and economic influence, over "hard" military power.

"Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish," he said. But the human dimension of warfare "is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain," Gates added.

The comments came as Iraqi workers swept up broken glass and other debris from bloodstained streets on Monday, a day after a series of explosions in Baghdad claimed the lives of at least 35 people.

The attacks began just before or after iftar, the meal that breaks the daily, dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They appeared aimed at reviving sectarian tensions that once brought the nation to the brink of all-out civil war.

The deadliest of Sunday's attacks occurred when a parked car bomb went off at a commercial complex as people were shopping shortly after sundown Sunday in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood.

Police said that two minutes later, a suicide bomber set off a second explosion as onlookers and security forces gathered near the first blast.

Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, raised the death toll in that explosion from 19 to 22. Four policemen were among the dead, they said.

Twelve people were killed and 35 wounded in two separate blasts. - Agencies