Talks on stabilizing Iraq put on hold - Amid more violence, reconciliation conference delayed

Talks on stabilizing Iraq put on hold - Amid more violence, reconciliation conference delayed
By Christopher Bodeen
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press
Published October 16, 2006

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's government Sunday indefinitely postponed a much-anticipated national reconciliation conference as a two-day spree of sectarian revenge killings and insurgent bombings left at least 86 Iraqis dead.

The U.S. military reported that three Marines and four soldiers were killed from Friday through Sunday.

The three Marines were killed in western Anbar province, the military said. Three of the soldiers died in a roadside bombing Saturday south of Baghdad, while the fourth was killed in a roadside bombing Friday southwest of the capital.

Weekend revenge killings among Shiites and Sunnis left at least 63 people dead in Balad, a city north of Baghdad, while 11 people died Sunday in a series of apparently coordinated bombings of a girls school and other targets in the northern city of Kirkuk, where Kurds and Arabs are in a tense struggle for control of the oil-rich city.

A militant network that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq announced in a video that it has established an Islamic state in six provinces, a propaganda push in its drive to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces and topple the Iraqi government.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of insurgent groups in Iraq, said the new state is made up of six provinces including Baghdad that have large Sunni populations, along with parts of two other central provinces that are predominantly Shiite.

Responding to the statement, the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, derided the group's leaders as "vulgar with no religion, who only kill others under the pretext of jihad [holy war]."

"Those who believe in this council are ignorant and those who follow it are foolish," al-Mashhadani said. "This council caused the sectarian conflict as well as the displacement of both Shiites and Sunnis."

The militants' announcement appeared mainly symbolic because no Iraqi insurgent group has the strength or authority to act as a rival government and none controls territory.

It underscored, however, the weakness of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government and its inability to bring Iraq's divided politicians together.

In announcing postponement of the reconciliation conference, the Ministry of State for National Dialogue Affairs said only that the gathering, which was planned for Saturday, had been put off for "emergency reasons out of the control of the ministry."

The move reflected the upheaval that worsening violence has wrought on efforts to stabilize the government and curb bloodshed.

The postponement could deeply damage al-Maliki's administration, which took office just over four months ago vowing to implement a 24-point National Reconciliation plan to heal the nation's severe political wounds.

Al-Maliki did not comment on the postponement but issued a message to the Iraqi people Sunday praising them for approving the country's first post-Saddam Hussein constitution exactly one year ago, while acknowledging the document's adoption has intensified the insurgency.