Top Iraqi leaders meet to defuse raging crisis

Top Iraqi leaders vowed national unity last night as they sought to pull their nation back from the brink of civil war after four days of communal bloodshed.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, President Jalal Talabani and a host of Shiite and Sunni leaders met at Jaafari's house for the first time since a wave of communal violence was ignited by the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday.

"All the leaders felt a need to accelerate the political process and proposed to sign a national pact between all the different political factions," Jaafari told reporters after the meeting that ended at 11:30 pm (2030 GMT).

"If I have any good news it is that Iraq is far away from a civil war. There is no Shiite against a Sunni or a Muslim against a non-Muslim ... the name of Iraq is above everything."

The sectarian clashes that erupted after Wednesday's bombing of the Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra claimed the lives of at least 119 people and threatened to derail talks on setting up a government of national unity.

The ambassadors of Britain and the United States were also present at the nightfall meeting yesterday, which followed a new wave of violence that was triggered when bombers blew up a car in Karbala that killed five people and wounded 52 others.

The bombing targeted a busy shopping street in the west of the city, 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Baghdad, as a police patrol passed by.

Three policemen were among those killed, said police who later announced that a suspect had been arrested.

The carnage prompted the government to extend the ban on road traffic in and around Baghdad to a third day, as the country sought to rescue itself from the threat of civil war.

Citing public safety, the interior ministry announced that the ban on traffic in Baghdad and its suburbs would extend from 6:00 am (0300 GMT) today until the same time on Monday and entry to and exit from the province would also be banned.

In another attempt to inflame the precarious Shiite-Sunni relations, attackers yesterday exploded a bomb near a well-known Shiite tomb in Taz Khurmatu, in northern Iraq, police said.

In other violence, 12 farm laborers including both Shiites and Sunnis were shot to death in an orchard yesterday morning in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, a relative of one of the victims told AFP.

Two policemen and a soldier were killed and ten wounded in attacks on the funeral procession west of Baghdad of an Al-Arabiya journalist killed Wednesday in Samarra where she had gone to report on the destruction of the golden dome mosque, police said.

"Nobody will profit from civil war and those who think they will, I tell them they will be the first to lose out," said Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, in a joint press conference with the interior minister, a Shia.

"We have to work together not to allow the takfiris (Islamist extremists) and Saddamists to succeed. We must not break ranks," he said, adding that if necessary, "We are ready to fill the streets with armored vehicles."

He also warned the media not to inflate stories that could stoke sectarian divisions.

Prior to the meeting, US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters in a conference call that the situation was improving.

"The terrorists wanted to provoke a civil war, but the way the Iraqi leadership responded was encouraging and they responded in a way to avoid going to a civil war," the ambassador said.

US President George W. Bush also made a series of calls to Iraqi leaders, including Jaafari and Talabani.

"(Bush) encouraged them to work together to thwart the efforts of perpetrators of the violence to sow discord among Iraq's communities," a statement from Talabani's office said.

Meanwhile, six people were arrested in connection with the destruction of Samarra's golden-domed shrine, Iraq's interior minister Bayan Jabr Solagh told reporters.

Reacting to the rising sectarian tensions, Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called Saturday for Iraq's powerful tribes to be deployed to protect the country's holy places after three attacks on Shiite shrines in four days, his office said.

The movement of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, widely alleged to have played a key role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, also made peace in public with political and religious Sunni leaders.