Iraq parties rally for coalition after bloodshed
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-03 11:02

One key issue that other parties want to discuss, however, is 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.

BUSH CALL

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."

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 on Thursday, the Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it would defend its neighborhoods.

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.

ATTACKS

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

Many Sunnis blame the Mehdi Army for attacks on Sunni mosques in the past week. Sadr denies any involvement in reprisals and has called for joint Sunni-Shi'ite prayers. The Muslim day of prayer on Friday may be another test of sentiment.

Jaafari's government has struggled to respond to violence that has killed at least 478 people, by a conservative tally from Iraqi officials issued by the U.S. military.

He has ordered thousands of Iraqi troops and police onto the streets of Baghdad, backed by U.S. soldiers, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties are uncertain in the face of sectarian militias to which some once belonged.

Fearful of reprisal attacks, some Baghdad residents have thrown up barricades. Others queue up to leave altogether.

"I want to get out of here as soon as I can," said pharmacist Samir Abdul Wahad, 38, as he arrived at the Baghdad Passport Office to renew his travel papers.

"I don't want to lose my life or my living because of a bunch of idiots fighting each other."

U.S. and Iraqi leaders accuse al Qaeda militants of bombing the shrine to drag Shi'ites into a civil war that would wreck U.S. plans. Some Sunnis say Iranian-backed Shi'ites did it to justify reprisals against the Sunni Arab minority.

Gunmen killed a Sunni imam in a mosque in the southern city of Basra and a roadside bomb went off near a Baghdad police station, killing three people and wounding 10 in a market.

The U.S. military said it captured 61 al Qaeda fighters in the west, where a U.S. soldier was killed on Wednesday.