Iraqi parties rally for coalition

Iraq's main political parties rallied behind efforts to form a national unity coalition after another day of sectarian violence yesterday that US and Iraqi leaders fear could lead to civil war.

But Sunni leaders said they were not dropping their demands that Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari step down.

Apparently fearing more trouble as Sunnis and Shi'ites head to their respective mosques on the Muslim day of prayer, state television announced a new daytime curfew on Baghdad today, the second week running the authorities have taken such action.

A bomb killed five people in a Shi'ite militia stronghold in the capital and an attack on Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi cranked up tension building since a bomb destroyed a Shi'ite shrine last week, sparking reprisals that have killed hundreds.

Mr Jaafari, under pressure over his performance in the crisis and from US officials keen to see him bring minority Sunnis into government, hosted talks with representatives of the main political blocs.

"We agreed to continue the dialogue among all the blocs," Jaafari ally Jawad al-Maliki told a news conference after the meeting, which included the Sunni Dulaimi, Kurds, other Shi'ites and secular leaders, and US and British diplomats.

"Anything can be discussed at the negotiating table," Mr Maliki said. "We have no red lines on anything."

One key issue that other parties want to discuss, however, is Mr Jaafari's own continuing role as premier: "The negotiations will go on but we still insist on removing Jaafari," a senior official in the Sunnis' Iraqi Accordance Front told Reuters.

A week ago, the Front said it would boycott the negotiations after reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.

Since Sunni Arabs took part in a US-sponsored election in December, President George W. Bush has been pushing hard for the ruling Shi'ites to bring them into a national coalition.

He says that could bring stability and let him start bringing home some of the 133,000 American soldiers now in Iraq. He said this week Iraqis had a choice between "chaos or unity".

Mr Jaafari, a Shi'ite Islamist, made a late-night appearance on state television to urge religious leaders to defuse sectarian passions from the pulpit: "The clerics of Friday must express themselves in the language of national unity," he said.

"We will take firm action against inflammatory rhetoric." Traffic will be banned in Baghdad but people will be able to walk to weekly prayers, officials said - similar to a three-day curfew last weekend that helped damp down the initial violence.

After a bomb on a minibus in the teeming and impoverished Sadr City bastion in Baghdad killed five people and wounded eight yesterday, the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it would defend its neighbourhoods.

Dozens of militiamen swarmed into the streets after the blast. Body parts littered the minibus' wreckage.

The US military, which mauled Sadr's militia in two anti-American uprisings in 2004, warned Sadr's forces.

"We are not going to allow him to take control of security of any area across Iraq, nor would the Iraqi government," said Major General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the US military.

In mainly Sunni west Baghdad, gunmen ambushed and destroyed Mr Dulaimi's armoured limousine. Mr Dulaimi survived because a flat tyre meant he had just got out to take another car and afterwards made earnest appeals for calm.