Iraq car bomb barrage as leaders meet in Brussels

BAGHDAD - A triple car bomb attack killed 18 people and wounded 48 in a mainly Shi'ite district of Baghdad as the new, Shi'ite-led government met its US sponsors and other foreign leaders in Brussels.

The bombs, apparently in stationary vehicles, struck the Shola neighbourhood after dark, causing widespread damage and casualties on the western district's main street, near a restaurant and close to a car repair workshop, police said.

A Reuters journalist saw a burned out building and a handful of wrecked cars near the restaurant bomb. With movement restricted in the capital at night, further details of the incidents and other blasts in the city were not available.

The co-ordinated nature of the assault, the latest in a wave of insurgent violence that has killed close to 1200 people including more than 120 US troops since the government was formed two months ago, is a trademark of al Qaeda Islamists.

Their organisation in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, issued a brief internet statement around the time of the blasts saying: "Stand by shortly for scenes from the Sunnis' reprisal raid."

It was not clear to what it referred.

The same website later showed images of fires in three different places and sounds of an explosion and shooting.

It was impossible to tell where or when the footage was made.

A fourth blast late on Wednesday in Baghdad targeted an Interior Ministry convoy, police said, giving no details.

In Brussels, the United States, European Union and other powers endorsed the stated aim of the Iraqi government to draw the once dominant Sunni Arab minority into a political process after many failed to vote at January's post-war election.

Iraq's security minister said he was in touch through intermediaries with some anti-American, nationalist rebels, urging them to come forward and negotiate and to break any links with those bent on holy war or restoring Saddam Hussein.

"There are nationalists within the insurgency who are against the (US) occupation. We are urging them to show their faces and come to the table," Abdul Karim al-Enzi told Reuters.

"We are not talking about the foreigners, Saddamists and religious radicals who think they have a divine right to label others heretics and sanction all sorts of killing."

In Washington, officials disclosed a CIA report saying the Iraqi insurgency may be training guerrillas who pose a greater threat to the United States than those like Osama bin Laden who learned their trade fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Fighters leaving Iraq would primarily pose a challenge for their countries of origin including Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

"You have people coming to the action with anti-US sentiment ... And since they're Iraqi or foreign Arabs or to some degree Kurds, they have more communities they can blend into outside Iraq," said the official, speaking anonymously.

"The urban warfare experience, for people facing fairly tight police and military activity at close quarters, should enable them to operate in a wider range of settings," added the official.

President George W. Bush, facing new criticism of a 2003 invasion that failed to find Saddam's supposed chemical and nuclear arsenal, said on Saturday Islamists had since flowed into Iraq, making it a "central front in the war on terror".

At the one-day conference in Brussels, staged to show world unity over Iraq two years after that controversial invasion, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari appealed for help to fight the insurgency and to rebuild his country.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attacked Syria for failing to stop insurgents crossing its border into Iraq and insisted Iraq was "well on the way to democracy".

Sunni leaders said they had formed a team to negotiate the text of the new constitution but full talks may be delayed -- sabotage has cut water and, consequently, air conditioning to the parliament building, forcing a week's recess.

The expanded negotiating body may not be approved until at least Tuesday.

Zarqawi and others have threatened to kill Sunni leaders who negotiate.

Some Sunni leaders have also accused Shi'ite militia's of sending hit squads against their representatives.

Jasim al-Ethawi, a Sunni law professor involved in the constitution discussions with parliament, was shot dead at his Baghdad home on Wednesday, along with his 18-year-old son, colleagues said.

Another professor, Abdul Satar Jabar al- Khazraji of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party was shot dead on Tuesday as he headed to work, the Defence Ministry said.

Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack on a US patrol in Mosul that killed three civilian passersby and wounded at least seven.

A US military report on the incident made no mention of US casualties.

The military said three soldiers were shot dead in the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday.

- REUTERS