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Kofi Annan arrives in Baghdad to meet with Iraqi leaders

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a meeting with Iraqi leaders while a car bomb exploded outside a public market in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, killing four and injuring 19.

In New Baghdad, two men, a woman and her eight-year-old daughter were killed in the blast, which also set off a large fire in the market, police Colonel Hassan Chaloub said.

Government spokesman Laith Kubba said Annan met with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

A UN statement said Annan would meet with al-Jaafari, Deputy Prime Minister Rowsh Shaways, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, political and community leaders as well as UN staff.

On Friday, al-Jaafari demanded that Syria do more to keep foreign fighters from crossing into western Iraq, where US troops are battling al-Qaeda-led forces after a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza. On Thursday he met with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Both Rice and Straw said they wanted to encourage participation in parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 15. In addition to meeting with Iraq's Shiite leadership, they also met with political leaders from the Sunni minority.

The leaders of Iraq's predominantly Sunni insurgency have called for a boycott of the election. But a Sunni Muslim politician who claims to have contacts with insurgent groups said on Saturday some of its members will be running next month's elections and gave their demands and conditions to start peace talks with US forces.

Ayham al-Samarie refused to say how many insurgents groups were planning to have candidates. He did not give further details and insurgent groups in the past have denied he represents them.

"The resistance should have an active role to help Iraq get out of its crisis," al-Samarie, a former electricity minister, told reporters.

Minutes before al-Samarie spoke, a statement was distributed in his house that allegedly included the resistance's conditions to start peace talks. The conditions included an immediate end to all military operations, release of all detainees, the withdrawal of foreign troops from cities and setting a time table for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.

In Baghdad late Friday, gunmen fired on the compound of the Embassy of Oman, killing two people and wounding two others -- the second fatal shooting involving employees of Arab embassies in Baghdad this week. One of the dead was a policeman and the other was an embassy employee.

On Wednesday, a driver for the Sudanese Embassy was shot to death in the same part of the capital, and last month two employees of the Moroccan Embassy were abducted on a highway in western Iraq.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for abducting the Moroccans, as well as for the July kidnap-slaying of three Arab diplomats -- two Algerians and one Egyptian -- in Baghdad.
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