BAGHDAD - Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance failed Tuesday to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari as eight people were killed in apparent sectarian bomb attacks.
Amid accusations the ongoing power vacuum was encouraging violence, at least five people were killed, including three policemen, and 13 wounded when a car bomb exploded in the capital's Hay Ur area close to the Immam Redha Shiite mosque, a security official said.
Three people were also killed when a bomb went off inside a minibus in Baghdad's Shiite dominated Sadr city just minutes after the meeting on Jaafari.
Kurds and Sunni Arabs had rejected his candidacy to head the next government, a key sticking point holding up its formation almost four months after elections, forcing the Shiites to meet to decide his fate.
But the Shiite alliance leaders broke up the talks aimed at resolving the political impasse until Wednesday, said Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Fadhila party, one of the members of the Shiite alliance.
Sharif said the Shiite leaders heard the report of a three-member committee that was mandated by the alliance to hold talks with the Kurdish, Sunni and secularist groups over Jaafari's candidacy.
"Their report was heard," he said, adding that the secularists led by former premier Iyad Allawi "had reservations about the programmes of the alliance and not about Jaafari himself."
On Monday, Allawi's group had also rejected Jaafari's candidacy.
As the deadlock continued, an adamant Jaafari refused to budge, reaffirming his position that only parliament could now decide his fate.
"I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said Tuesday.
"I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."
The dominant UIA, which won 128 out of 275 parliament seats in the December election, chose Jaafari by a single vote in February but his nomination has faced stiff resistance amid accusations he failed to quell violence.
The alliance lacks the overall majority in parliament needed to push through a nomination for prime minister on its own.
The deadlock has stalled the formation of a national unity government despite sustained pressure from the United States which is looking to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
Iraqi state television Al-Iraqiya said Tuesday that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had spoken to Jaafari and discussed the current political situation.
US President George W. Bush also called upon Iraqi leaders to resolve the political crisis.
"The longer Iraq's leaders delay in forming a unity government, the greater the risk that the terrorists and former regime elements will succeed in their efforts to foment division and to stop the progress of an Iraq democracy," Bush said Monday in Washington.
More than 100 Shiites died last week in a series of bombings, some of them targeted at their religious sites in a bid to stir more sectarian killings between Iraq's majority Shiite community and the Sunni Arabs who ruled under Saddam Hussein.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak bluntly said a "civil war was underway" in Iraq, a claim supported by Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Ali Kamal.
In protest at Mubarak's remarks, Jaafari said Iraq will not participate in a neighbours' conference in Cairo that starts Wednesday and is aimed at discussing Iraq's internal problems.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Cairo would still go ahead with the meeting.
"This is not the first meeting to be held on Iraq without the participation of the Iraqi brothers," Abul Gheit told reporters.
In other violence, police also found five unidentified corpses and the beheaded body of an Iraqi soldier in two towns south of Baghdad.
The body of an Iranian woman was also found with bullet wounds in the restive city of Baquba, northeast of the capital.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi High Tribunal trying Saddam and seven others over the killing of Shiite villagers said Wednesday's trial hearing would be brief and "none of the defendants will be present."
The next full session of the trial will be on April 17.

04/11/2006 17:44 GMT