IRAQ: Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has warned political parties it is vital to accelerate efforts to form a broad government to stop any slide into civil war, after bombs killed 52 people on Sunday in a Shia Baghdad slum.
The bodies of four men suspected of involvement in the blasts hung from pylons, residents of the Shia Sadr City district said yesterday. Police said a sign left by the bodies, bearing gunshot and torture wounds, read: "These are the traitors".
A government of national unity encompassing Kurds, Sunnis and the majority Shias is widely seen as the best way to bring stability to the country, but three months after elections, political leaders are deadlocked over who should lead it.
"It is the duty of the political blocs to intensify their efforts to form a government and establish a broad front to achieve security and stability," Mr Talabani said.
Politicians said they would step up negotiations but doubted a deal would be possible by the time the parliament elected in December meets for its first session on Thursday.
In more violence, 15 people were killed and 55 wounded, mainly by roadside bombs. A provincial governor survived a car bomb attack on his convoy, while two bodyguards for a member of parliament were killed in an ambush on his motorcade in Baghdad.
Meanwhile Britain has said it will trim its force in Iraq by 10 per cent and that the process of handing over security responsibility for swathes of territory to Iraqi forces could begin within weeks. The United States has about 130,000 troops in Iraq.
Mr Talabani, a Kurd, said the bombings in Sadr City were meant to "inflame sectarian strife and fan the fires of civil war".
Officials, including the US ambassador, have warned that another attack like the Samarra mosque bombing last month could spark all-out sectarian conflict.
Radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said he would not order his militia to strike Sunni al- Qaeda militants after Sunday's bombings in the stronghold of his Mehdi army militia. The Mehdi army was accused of leading reprisals on Sunni mosques and clerics after Samarra that killed hundreds in a few days, an accusation al-Sadr has denied.
Mehdi militiamen roamed the sprawling east Baghdad slum, home to 2 million people, yesterday, stopping cars and people to search for explosives.
Sunnis, Kurds and secular leaders have been blocking accord on forming a unity government with a demand that Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shia who has led the interim government for the past year, be dropped as the Shias' choice of prime minister for the new term.
But Sunni Arabs seeking the post of speaker and Kurds seeking the post of president for Mr Talabani need the support of the dominant Shia Alliance bloc for their candidates, meaning parties will need to compromise.
Iraq's politicians said they were determined to reach a deal as soon as possible but that it would take time.
Meanwhile, a former head of Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Court, said yesterday he had issued death sentences for 148 Shias in the 1980s but insisted they had confessed to an Iran-backed plot to kill the former Iraqi leader and that their trial was fair.
Awad Hamed al-Bandar is on trial along with Saddam and six others for killing 148 men from Dujail after an attempt on Saddam's life in the town in 1982.Saddam is due to testify in his own defence tomorrow. - (Reuters)