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Kurdish leaders meet with Shiites to hash out Iraqi coalition government

Iraqis gather around a burning vehicle after an engagement involving a US helicopter, in which one woman and two children were killed, and many others injured, according to witnesses in Mosul, Iraq, Sunday. PHOTO: AP

Kurdish leaders were converging on Baghdad for last-minute talks yesterday with majority Shiites as both sides pressed to secure a deal to form a coalition government before the newly-elected parliament meets for the first time later this week.

In northern Iraq, gunmen killed Hussam Hilal Sarsam, a Kurdish cameraman for the Kurdish satellite channel KurdSat, witnesses who saw his corpse transported by Iraqi troops outside the governor's office in Mosul said.

Twenty kilometers south of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in Youssifiyah, said police Lieutenant Adnan Mohammed of the nearby Mahmudiyah hospital said. The blast missed a convoy of sport utility vehicles, hitting a civilian vehicle instead and wounding four civilians.

In the capital, five bodyguards of Sa'ad al-Amily, the Health Ministry's director general, were wounded in a roadside bomb attack, a police captain said on condition of anonymity. The guards were heading to al-Amily's home to pick him up at the time, he said.

Shiites and Kurds have been haggling over the makeup of the new government ever since the Jan. 30 ballot elected a new national assembly. Parliament meets tomorrow.

The political deal calls for Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, to be named president. Conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the Shiite majority United Iraqi Alliance coalition, would become prime minister.

"We're not interested in the government posts, we're more interested in Kurdistan and Iraq's interests," Talabani told reporters in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah, 260km northeast of Baghdad.

"We have made good progress. We have a common understanding with the United Iraqi Alliance that we should establish an Iraqi state based on the principles of federalism and respecting human and women's rights," Talabani said.

Ali al-Dabagh of the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance said he was optimistic a final deal would be reached before parliament meets Wednesday. But "if no agreement is reached, the first session of the national assembly will be held [tomorrow] anyway," he said.

Outside the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Sunday, Kurdish leaders met Sunday to hammer out final details on a coalition government in accordance with a deal reached earlier this month with the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance.
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