Iraq PM says 'last chance' for peace

BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqis today they had one last chance for peace as US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Iraqi leaders on the escalating sectarian violence in the country.

The US commander in Iraq said Shi'ite "death squads" were fuelling a spike in the violence in which scores of people have been killed in street fighting, reprisal attacks and bombings in Baghdad neighbourhoods in the past few days. The US ambassador said communal bloodshed was now a bigger threat than al Qaeda.

Several hours after Maliki spoke, clashes erupted between gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and police and residents in Um al-Maalif, a mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood in southern Baghdad. Police said at least two people were killed.

Security forces said the bodies of 20 bus drivers kidnapped earlier in the day from a bus station in religiously mixed Miqdadiya, north of Baghdad, were found blindfolded and bound in a nearby village. They freed four others from a house.

Major General Ghassan al-Bawi, the police chief of Diyala province, said the killings aimed to undermine a reconciliation accord agreed by Sunni and Shi'ite tribes in the area. There were conflicting reports on the victims' religious affiliation.

Maliki told parliament a national reconciliation plan he has promoted was Iraq's "last chance" to stem the violence.

"If it fails, I don't know what the destiny of Iraq will be," he told the assembled Iraqi lawmakers, including representatives of the minority Sunni community who had staged a week-long boycott in protest at the kidnapping of a colleague.

Maliki said Iraqi security forces had defeated a coordinated attempt in recent days by gunmen to occupy Baghdad districts west of the Tigris. Gunmen have fought in the streets and battled security forces in several districts in the past week.

Death squads

The US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said Sunni militants in al Qaeda were stoking the sectarian violence.

"What we are seeing now as a counter to that are death squads, primarily from Shi'ite extremist groups that are retaliating against civilians," he told reporters.

"So you have both sides now attacking civilians. And that is what has caused the recent spike in violence here in Baghdad."

The Sunni Arab minority was dominant under Saddam Hussein, who is being tried for crimes against humanity. The US military said today Saddam and three of his co-defendants had been on hunger strike for five days in protest at court procedures and the killing of their defence lawyers.

Saddam's lawyer said the protest had lasted for seven days and he was concerned about the former president's health.

US commanders have often been careful not to label gunmen as Shi'ites, although many of the recent attacks in Baghdad neighbourhoods have been blamed by Sunnis and police on the Mehdi army militia controlled by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Sadr condemned all attacks on Sunnis and Shi'ites in a conciliatory interview on Iraqiya state television on Wednesday and called on the Mehdi Army to refrain from acts of violence.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said yesterday sectarian violence was the main challenge to security forces. So the US military is adapting its tactics, but Rumsfeld cautioned that the "solution is not military" to ending communal bloodshed.

"We make a mistake if we take the security question and think of it as separate from everything else. The prime minister's effort with respect to reconciliation will be critically important in achieving better success," he said.

An upbeat Rumsfeld said he was confident Iraq would emerge from the violence as a "fine success" for the region.

Maliki has offered talks with some Sunni rebels and a limited amnesty under his 24-point plan in a bid to draw Sunnis, the seat of the insurgency, closer into the political process.

Rumsfeld, whose trip also comes amid growing anti-war sentiment among the US public in a congressional election year, said it was still too early to talk about adjusting US troop levels. "We haven't gotten to that point," he said.

He said at the start of his trip he did not plan to discuss a series of inquiries in which US soldiers are suspected of killing Iraqi civilians. The cases have led Maliki to call for a review of foreign soldiers' immunity from Iraqi courts.

- REUTERS