IRAQ: Iraq's most powerful Shia politician met the country's Kurdish president at a lakeside retreat yesterday to sketch out plans for a grand coalition government capable of ending violent sectarian unrest.
In an illustration of the task the politicians face, 11 members of a Shia family had their throats slit in an attack south of Baghdad. Police said insurgents had warned the family to move out of their largely Sunni neighbourhood. Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed four policemen and wounded five when he blew himself up at a checkpoint near the interior ministry in Baghdad, and a police chief was seriously wounded in a gun attack near Falluja.
A sabotage attack in northern Iraq and bad weather in the south halted the country's oil exports, while an oil refinery north of Baghdad was forced to shut down for security reasons. Fuel shortages have increased popular frustration with successive Iraqi governments.
The al-Qaeda network in Iraq issued a video showing five Sudanese embassy staff taken hostage, including a diplomat. A statement demanded Khartoum cut ties with Baghdad within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, with Sunni politicians angry about the election results and Shias seeking to press home their advantage after dominating the December 15th poll, the meeting between Shia leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and President Jalal Talabani in the Kurdish mountain resort of Dukan had been billed as a key encounter.
"Among the things we discussed was the possibility of getting others involved in forming the next government," Mr al-Hakim told a news conference.
Mr al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) is part of a Shia Islamist coalition that appears to have dominated the vote. The coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, wants to press on with forming a government and has insisted it should choose the next prime minister.
But Sunni and secular politicians say the election was fixed and have demanded a rerun. Tens of thousands of angry Sunnis have marched through cities across Iraq to contest the vote.
Iraq's Electoral Commission insisted again yesterday the election was largely fair and, while isolated cases of fraud might result in the cancellation of a few ballot boxes, it will not affect the overall result. The United Nations agrees.
Former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, backed a proposal that international observers should look into any electoral violations.
Perhaps sensing a rerun is now out of the question, some Sunni Arab leaders scaled back their demands yesterday, saying they would be satisfied with a UN review of the results, which have yet to be officially confirmed.
The leaders said they planned to travel to Kurdistan to join the ongoing discussions - but only to discuss the election results, not the future government.
"There will be no negotiations about forming the new government," said Hussein al-Falluji, a leading member of the biggest Sunni coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF).
"We will not have any dialogue about it, not with the Kurds and not with the Shias. Results should be reviewed and announced first."
Provisional results suggest the Sunni IAF will have some 40 seats in the new 275-seat assembly, against 130 for the Shia Alliance. The Kurds, headed by Mr Talabani, look to have around 50 seats while Mr Allawi's broad secular alliance has around 25. - (Reuters)