US envoy urges crackdown on Iraq militias

The U.S. Ambassador urged Iraq's divided leaders to rein in militias yesterday as political blocs failed again to break a deadlock on forming a unity government that they hope can avert civil war.

Zalmay Khalilzad, who is pressing hard for a government more than three months after elections, issued a tough warning about the militias, many of which have ties to powerful Shi'ite leaders and are entrenched in Iraqi security forces and police.

Iraq's Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders held another round of talks aimed at resolving differences holding up formation of post-war Iraq's first full-term government. Politicians told a news conference they were optimistic about forming a government. Sunni politician Tareq al-Hashemi said talks focused on ways of building a solid political foundation for the new government.

The destruction of a Shi'ite shrine a month ago sparked a wave of reprisals that raised the prospect of pro-government Shi'ite militias pushing Iraq into civil war, nearly three years after insurgents from the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority began a campaign against the US-backed authorities.

The crisis has increased pressure to form a cabinet that can avert an all-out sectarian conflict. Police found 10 more bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence, in different parts of Baghdad yesterday.

Many of them showed signs of torture, including some who were garrotted. Gunmen killed a traffic policeman in central Baghdad, then placed a bomb inside his booth, which killed four civilians in a minibus and wounded four others, police said.

In Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, mortar bombs hit houses, killing four people and wounding 13, police said.

Shi'ite militias have melded into Iraqi security forces and police, and they are unlikely to want to give up their weapons at a time of raging sectarian violence. Khalilzad renewed accusations on Friday that Iran is training, supplying and funding Shi'ite violence in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States - probably Khalilzad - will talk to Iran about Washington's accusations of Iranian destabilisation of Iraq, in the first public acceptance of an Iranian offer to meet.