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BAGHDAD, March 25: The US ambassador on Saturday urged Iraq’s divided leaders to rein in militias as political blocs failed again to break a deadlock on forming a unity government that they hope can avert civil war.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who is pressing hard for a government more than three months after elections, issued a tough warning about the militias, many of which have ties to powerful Shia leaders and are entrenched in Iraqi security forces and police.
“More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists,” he told reporters during a visit to a Baghdad youth centre newly renovated with US funds.
“The militias need to be under control.”
Iraq’s Shia, Kurdish and Sunni leaders held another round of talks aimed at resolving differences holding up formation of post-war Iraq’s first full-term government. But there was no sign of a breakthrough.
Sunni politician Tareq al Hashemi said talks focused on ways of building a solid political foundation for the new government.
The destruction of a shrine a month ago sparked a wave of reprisals that raised the prospect of pro-government Shia militias pushing Iraq into civil war.
The crisis has increased pressure to form a cabinet that can avert an all-out sectarian conflict.
IRANIAN HELP: Mr Khalilzad renewed accusations that Iran is training, supplying and funding violence in Iraq.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States — probably Mr Khalilzad — would talk to Iran about Washington’s accusations of Iranian destabilisation of Iraq, in the first public acceptance of an Iranian offer to meet.
In Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he supported talks with the United States about Iraq but was suspicious of US motives.
Washington is eager for Iraqi leaders to stabilise Iraq so that US troops can go home. But a withdrawal is contingent upon the performance of Iraqi troops, who have watched guerillas kill thousands of their comrades.
Some Sunnis have started forming organised forces as a counterweight to the likes of the Badr organisation and the Mehdi Army, both powerful Shia militias, putting Iraq on the brink of full-blown civil war.
Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Friday that parties were now willing to compromise but he warned a deal must be reached soon or Iraqis would ‘take the law into their own hands’.
Parliamentary polls were held in December but a row over the prime minister and sectarian violence have delayed the formation of Iraq’s first full-term government since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
Several US senators visiting Iraq on Saturday said US patience was running thin over Iraq, with some suggesting a continued military presence would only fuel the resistance.
Senator John McCain, head of the delegation, said he was guardedly optimistic a new government would be formed ‘in weeks’.
10 BODIES FOUND: Police found 10 more bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence, in different parts of Baghdad on Saturday. Many of them showed signs of torture, including some that were garrotted.
Gunmen killed a traffic policeman in central Baghdad, then placed a bomb inside his booth which killed four civilians in a minibus and wounded four others, police said.
In Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, mortar bombs hit houses, killing four people and wounding 13, police said. —Reuters
