KEY POINTS:
BAGHDAD - Baghdad endured a third day under curfew on Sunday as the government sought to keep on a lid on seething anger that has killed hundreds in the past three days.
A UN envoy urged the government on Saturday to stop the "cancer" of sectarianism from destroying the country.
As a curfew on Baghdad was extended until Monday, derailing a trip to Iran by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the United Nations' representative said car bombs on Thursday that killed more than 200 Shi'ites and "blind acts of revenge" were "tearing apart the very political and social fabric of Iraq".
"No country could tolerate such a cancer in its body politic," Ashraf Qazi said in a statement.
Talabani was to have flown to Tehran on Sunday, but his spokesman, Hiwa Othman, said it was now hoped the trip could go ahead on Monday.
The president met government leaders again on Saturday evening to discuss how to resolve the current crisis and avert a worsening of violence. An official said a joint statement on security measures would be made on Sunday.
Talabani's visit to anti-American Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom Washington accuses of backing militant fellow Shi'ites in Iraq, is part of efforts to involve Iraq's neighbours in efforts to prevent civil war. Othman said that contrary to some speculation, Syria's president would not join the meeting.
US President George W. Bush appears sceptical of what his adversaries Iran and Syria are willing to do. However, Vice President Dick Cheney made a brief visit to Saudi Arabia on Saturday to discuss security in the Middle East.
A Western diplomat said the United States wanted to counter the threat from Iran and Syria by co-opting moderate Arab nations on both Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli issue and the current diplomatic push was proof of this.
Bush is expected to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan on Wednesday, despite a threat by a key Maliki ally, radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, to boycott the government if it goes ahead.
The Shi'ite-led government has called for calm. But mortar rounds hit Sadr City and other districts after dark on Saturday, causing a number of casualties, police said, and several blasts echoed around the city early on Sunday.
An Interior Ministry source said the bodies of 30 victims of violence were picked up in Baghdad on Friday and 17 on Saturday. Yarmouk hospital in west Baghdad said it took in 33 in the two days. Hakim al-Zamily, a deputy health minister from Sadr's faction, said 33 Shi'ites were killed in west Baghdad in sectarian attacks. Police and the hospital could not confirm it.
Police found the bodies of 21 men and boys from an extended Shi'ite family on Saturday in a mainly Sunni Arab village in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, security sources said.
The US military said a suicide car bomber killed three Iraqi civilians, including two children, and one coalition soldier at a checkpoint in Khaldiya, 83 km west of Baghdad on Saturday. Nine more civilians were wounded.
- REUTERS
