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BAGHDAD, March 14 (AFP) - 18h16 - Kurdish and
Shiite negotiators met Monday night in Baghdad in an
effort to break their deadlock on forming Iraq's
next government, said a senior official from the
Shiites' United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
"They need to overcome their differences," said Adan
Ali, an aide to the Shiite candidate for prime
minister, Ibrahim Jaafari.
He said the sides started meeting at 5 pm (1400
GMT), but declined to predict whether there would be
a breakthrough ahead of the historic first session
of the country's new parliament just two days away.
"No one is in a hurry because they know they have to
agree eventually," he said.
On Sunday, Kurdish leaders deflated hopes for an
imminent deal on forming a government with the UIA
when they called for revisions to a preliminary
agreement between the sides.
Kurdish chieftain Jalal Talabani said Monday that
the talks were deadlocked on the ethnically-divided
city of Kirkuk and the status of the Kurds'
peshmerga militia.
The Kurds, long oppressed by Iraq's Arab majority,
want iron-clad commitments that their tens of
thousands of peshmerga fighters will continue to
provide security in the three Kurdish provinces of
Arbil, Dahuk and Sulaimaniyah.
They want no other Iraqi force to be allowed to
enter the virtual autonomous zone without the
Kurdish regional government's permission.
The Kurds also want concrete pledges that the new
government will resettle the tens of thousands of
Kurds expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein over
three decades and that it will work to restore
territory to Kirkuk that Saddam apportioned to other
provinces.
For their part, the Shiites need the Kurds' 77 seats
in parliament to muster the two-thirds majority
required in the legislative body to elect a
presidency council which in turn nominates the prime
minister.
Shiites, Kurds hold last-minute talks to form
Iraqi government coalition
BAGHDAD, March 14 (AFP) - 18h46 - Kurdish and
Shiite politicians met Monday in a last-minute
effort to form a governing coalition ahead of the
historic opening session of Iraq's new parliament,
while eight people were killed in attacks.
"They need to overcome their differences," said
Adnan Ali, an aide to the Shiite candidate for prime
minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, after the fresh round of
talks started at 5 pm (1400 GMT).
Earlier in the day, Kurdish chieftain Jalal Talabani
said negotiations with Iraq's election-winning
Shiite list were at an impasse over Kurdish demands
on Kirkuk and the status of their peshmerga
fighters.
"There are disagreements about two points. The first
is the fate of the peshmerga, and the second one is
concerning Kirkuk. Our negotiations with the
(Shiite) alliance continue," Talabani told reporters
as he announced he was heading to Baghdad for
Wednesday's session of the 275-member national
assembly.
Talabani, the frontrunner for Iraq's presidency, was
speaking after Kurdish leaders said Sunday they were
insisting on changes to a draft agreement setting
out the terms for an alliance with the Shiites'
United Iraqi Alliance, which has the largest share
of seats in the new parliament with 146 members.
The Kurds, long oppressed by Iraq's Arab majority,
want iron-clad commitments that their tens of
thousands of peshmerga fighters will continue to
provide security in the three Kurdish provinces of
Arbil, Dahuk and Sulaimaniyah.
They want no other Iraqi force to be allowed to
enter the virtual autonomous zone without the
Kurdish regional government's permission.
The Kurds also want concrete pledges that the new
government will resettle the tens of thousands of
Kurds expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein over
three decades and that it will work to restore
territory to Kirkuk that Saddam apportioned to other
provinces.
For their part, the Shiites, poised for their first
real taste of political power, are eager to reach
out to Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, Christians and Turkmen
as a means to stave off the threat of the country
sliding into civil war.
The Shiites need the Kurds' 77 seats in parliament
to muster the two-thirds majority required in the
legislative body to elect a presidency council which
in turn nominates the prime minister.
The plodding negotiations, six weeks after milestone
national elections, have triggered a wave of
criticism from Shiite religious leaders who have
demanded the government be put in place to tackle
the resistance behind daily attacks.
Outgoing president Ghazi al-Yawar said Monday he has
formed a committee of leading Sunni Muslim figures,
including elder statesman Adnan Pachachi and Tareq
al-Hashemi, secretary general of the Islamic Party,
to negotiate for posts in the government.
Sunnis garnered a paltry 15-20 seats in the
parliament due to a boycott by large segments of the
community of the January 30 elections out of
antipathy for Iraq's post-Saddam order.
Even as Kurds and Shiites attempted to woo the Sunni
bloc, a US official warned the problem with the
embittered minority was that they were speaking with
many voices, without a single bloc to represent
them.
Insurgents, made up of different elements of Iraq's
Sunni minority, alienated by the rise of Shiites and
Kurds, carried out a fresh wave of attacks Monday.
An Iraqi cameraman, Husam Hilal Sarsam, working for
a Kurdish-language television station was gunned
down in the northern city of Mosul, hospital sources
said.
A pair of Iraqi farmers were killed and two others
wounded when a car bomb targeting a US military
convoy exploded in Rashid, 25 kilometres (15 miles)
south of Baghdad, police said.
In the north, a truck driver in a Turkish convoy
escorted by US troops was killed when his vehicle
hit a roadside bomb near the village of Al-Hajaj
around the refinery town of Baiji, 220 kilometres
(140 miles) from Baghdad, Iraqi police said.
And in Baghdad, a bomb attack on the car of the
director general of the Iraqi health ministry
wounded four of his bodyguards Monday morning in
eastern Baghdad, a medical source said.
In Mahmudiyah to the south, a local hospital
received three bodies and a wounded man who later
also died. The men were attacked by gunmen while
travelling on a road near Mahmudiyah, a hospital
official said.
Meanwhile, Tareq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's
jailed right-hand men who is being investigated for
crimes against humanity, issued a handwritten plea
asking the international community to ensure he
receives a fair trial, his son told AFP.
Aziz, former Iraqi deputy prime minister and the
international face of Iraq under Saddam's regime,
surrendered in April 2003 shortly after Baghdad fell
to the Americans.
Relatives of a Sudanese national kidnapped in Iraq
last week, Mohammad Harun Hammad, appealed Monday to
his captors to release him, Sudanese media said.
"I appeal to the captors to set free my brother
Mohammad, the breadwinner of his family, who has no
political leanings," one of his brothers was quoted
as saying.
AFP
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