(Updates with more Cheney quotes)

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD, May 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday pressed Iraq's leaders to move without delay to reach power-sharing accords that Washington says are vital to ending sectarian violence.

Cheney's unannounced visit to Iraq, part of a Middle East tour, signals growing U.S. impatience at Iraq's slowness in passing laws on oil distribution and other key measures as American military commanders build up troops to secure Baghdad.

Cheney said talks also centred on the crackdown in the capital, involving the deployment of 30,000 extra U.S. troops in what is seen as a last-ditch effort to stave off civil war between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunni Arabs.

"I emphasised the importance of making progress on the issues before us, not only on the security issues but also on the political issues that are pending before the Iraqi government," Cheney told a news conference.

"I think they recognise that it's in their interest as well as in our interest that they make progress on the political front just as we deal with the security issues."

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said his government was committed to restoring order, achieving national reconciliation and ensuring all Iraqis were able to share in the country's vast oil wealth.

Underscoring Iraq's huge security challenges, a suicide truck bomber killed 14 people and wounded 87 in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region in the north, and three Iraqi journalists and their driver were dragged from their car, tortured and then shot dead near the city of Kirkuk.

An explosion, apparently caused by a mortar bomb, also rattled windows at the building in the fortified Green Zone where Cheney and reporters travelling with him were working.

Journalists were hustled two floors down to a shelter, but Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman, said he was not interrupted.

"His business was not disrupted. He was not moved," she said. Mortar attacks on the Green Zone are frequent.

U.S. President George W. Bush is under pressure to show concrete progress in the four-year war, in which more than 3,300 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

With U.S. troops dying daily, American officials have urged the Iraqi parliament to scrap a planned two-month summer recess.

During a visit to Baghdad last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said progress on a package of laws that include a bill dividing up Iraq's oil wealth would be an important factor in Washington's decision to maintain higher troop levels.

Cheney said he could not predict if Iraq's parliament would cancel its July-August break, but said "any undue delay would be difficult to explain".

Iraqi lawmakers said this week they might shorten their recess but bridled at U.S. pressure to shelve the holiday.

TROOP TIMETABLE

Cheney arrived in Baghdad on the day a USA Today/Gallup poll showed six out of 10 Americans support setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out, even though a clear majority predict civil war in Iraq if U.S. forces withdraw next year.

Last week, Bush vetoed a war-spending bill because it called for a pullout of combat troops starting no later than October.

Cheney's visit comes at a sensitive time. Leaders from the Sunni Arab minority have threatened to quit Maliki's government because they say Sunni interests are being ignored.

Washington says a Sunni role in government is needed to bring Sunnis firmly into the political process and tame the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Ethnic Kurds, staunch U.S. allies, have also threatened to block the oil bill in parliament. The bill is another U.S. benchmark, along with legislation to end a ban on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from public office, a plan that has met deep Shi'ite opposition.

The attack in Kurdistan, which police said was by a truck packed with 800 kg (1,700 lb) of explosives covered with kitchen cleaning products, was a rare event in the autonomous oil-producing region, usually much calmer than the rest of Iraq.

Officials said the blast near the Kurdish government's Interior Ministry in the capital Arbil killed 14 and wounded 87.

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