With the military campaign in Iraq entering its fourth year, President Bush is seeking to shore up the American public’s resolve to see the difficult endeavor through, even as a former prime minister of Iraq joined those warning that the country has slid into a civil war.

In an unusual Sunday afternoon statement to reporters at the White House, Mr. Bush said efforts to form a “unity government” of democratically elected officials in Iraq were moving forward.

“The Iraqi leaders are working together to enact a government that reflects the will of the people. I’m encouraged by the progress,” Mr. Bush said. “We are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq.”

The upbeat president ignored a reporter’s question about grim comments from a former Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who said yesterday that it is a mistake to “underplay” the fighting taking place among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions.

“It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing a day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,” Mr. Allawi told the BBC in an interview from Baghdad. “Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point and we should avert the path of the country.”

Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister from 2004 to 2005, said the strife is already prompting Iraqis to flee to other countries and could tear Iraq into separate religious fiefdoms. In that event, “sectarianism will spread throughout the region and even Europe and the United States would not be spared of the violence that may occur,” he said.

The former Iraqi leader said he was still holding out hope for a political solution. “We are edging toward this,” he said. “People are recognizing the dangers.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” program yesterday, Vice President Cheney was asked if he agreed with Mr. Allawi that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. “I don’t,” Mr. Cheney said. “Clearly, there is an attempt under way by the terrorists, by Zarqawi and others, to foment civil war. That’s been their strategy all along, but my view would be they’ve reached a stage of desperation from their standpoint,” the vice president said.

Asked about his claim last year that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes,” Mr. Cheney insisted that his comments were “basically accurate and reflect reality.” The vice president said the press was largely to blame for the perception that the war in Iraq is not going well. “What’s newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad. It’s not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress toward rebuilding Iraq,” Mr. Cheney said.

The vice president’s appearance was part of a renewed White House public relations offensive to ensure that the administration’s message on Iraq is not drowned out by the daily news of killings, bombings, and kidnappings in that country. Today, Mr. Bush is to travel to Cleveland to deliver a speech underscoring the progress in Iraq and stressing that the administration has a strategy that will eventually allow American troops to withdraw from the country.

One part of the new publicity campaign was an op-ed piece Defense Secretary Rumsfeld published yesterday in the Washington Post. “Now is the time for resolve, not retreat,” Mr. Rumsfeld wrote. “Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn’t have the patience to work with them as they build free countries.”

One foreign policy veteran scoffed yesterday at Mr. Rumsfeld’s analogy. “That is really absolutely crazy to anyone who knows history,” a former national security adviser under President Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, told CNN. He noted that, unlike the Iraqis, Germans had experience with democracy prior to World War II. They also offered no resistance once the war ended. “The situation in Iraq is totally different. And for Secretary Rumsfeld to be talking this way suggests either he doesn’t know history or he’s simply demagoguing,” Mr. Brzezinski said.

Meanwhile, another round of finger pointing over Iraq broke out yesterday. In an interview with NBC, an Iraqi leader who supported and gave advice on the American military assault, Ahmed Chalabi, blamed the former civilian administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, for the postwar failures. Mr. Brzezinski said that suggestion gave Mr. Bremer too much credit in a process driven by other personalities.

In addition, a former Army major general who oversaw training for Iraqi forces, Paul Eaton, wrote in the New York Times that Mr. Rumsfeld should resign because of his failures to plan adequately for the aftermath of the war.

While American military leaders downplayed the civil-war talk yesterday, one Republican lawmaker, Senator Hagel of Nebraska, said generals have privately described the situation that way.

“I think we have had a low-grade civil war going on in Iraq, certainly the last six months, maybe the last year,” Mr. Hagel told ABC.

For his part, Mr. Bush said yesterday he hopes Americans will use the three-year-mark since the start of the invasion to focus on the sacrifices of American military personnel.

“On this third anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I think all Americans should offer thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform, and their families who support them,” he said.