By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON, June 21 (Reuters) - The latest U.S. military offensive in Iraq should be judged not by whether it reduces violence but whether Iraqi leaders pass reconciliation measures, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday.

"If you try to define this in terms of level of violence, you've really put yourself on the wrong metric," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in Operation Phantom Thunder, an effort to crack down on al Qaeda militants and other insurgents in various parts of Iraq that began at the weekend.

But Pace said America's enemies still would be able to influence the level of violence.

A better indicator of success, he said, was whether ordinary Iraqis felt their lives were improving and politicians felt they could proceed with measures intended to build confidence between Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds.

Those measures include sharing revenue from the oil industry and relaxing laws that banned many Sunnis from public jobs, U.S. and Iraqi officials have said. Sunnis controlled much of the state under deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

"What we're trying to do is to get, for the Iraqi government, enough space inside of which that they can do the good governance that they promised that they will do with regard to the laws that they're going to pass and the economics," Pace said.

Pace's two-year term as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ends in September. Gates chose not to renominate him for the job because divisions over the war would have made Pace's reconfirmation hearing too contentious.

Twelve U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past two days, mostly by roadside bombs, the military said on Thursday.

Many tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,540 U.S. troops have died and since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam.

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