IRAQ: Gunmen killed a much-loved Iraqi comedian on Monday as attacks and kidnaps of senior politicians and dozens of citizens prompted the defence minister to declare that Iraq was now in a "state of war".
As pressure mounted on US president George Bush to change tack and his allies urged him to approach Washington's adversaries Syria and Iran to help stabilise Iraq, Syria's foreign minister visited Baghdad for the first time since the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
A government official said the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani would visit Tehran this weekend at the invitation of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iraqi and US officials have accused Iran of supporting Shi'ite militias and insurgents.
In Damascus a Syrian official, asked about a report that president Bashar al-Assad would also go to Tehran and join the two other leaders there, said: "There are no plans for such a [ tripartite] summit." The past week has seen sectarian tensions come to a head inside Iraq's national unity government, which has yet to make progress on key issues six months after taking office. At a news conference uniting ministers who have been openly at odds over the fate of dozens of civil servants kidnapped by suspected Shi'ite militiamen, defence minister Abdel Qader Jassim said the security forces were hunting the kidnappers: "We are in a state of war and in war all measures are permissible."
The Shi'ite interior minister said it was not a sectarian attack on the Sunni-run Higher Education Ministry. Education officials have rejected government assertions that most hostages have been freed, saying dozens are still missing.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is preparing a cabinet reshuffle and is under US pressure to disband militias loyal to his fellow Shi'ites, warned Iraq's political leaders they had to abandon sectarian, partisan interests and pull together. "We cannot be politicians by day and with the militias or terrorists . . . by night," he told generals, whose own loyalties are in question.
Comic Waleed Hassan, whose satirical television show let Iraqis laugh at the sectarian violence and economic chaos, was killed by three bullets to the head on his way to work.