BAGHDAD, Aug 13 (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, held talks here Friday with Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Ghazi al-Yawar, a spokesman said.
The envoy reiterated UN calls for a peaceful settlement to fighting between US and Iraqi forces and Shiite Muslim militia in the central holy city of Najaf, which has entered its second week, he said, reading a statement.
Asked whether the United Nations was working to mediate a peaceful solution to the Najaf fighting, the spokesman said only that the world body was ready to extend its good offices where they were welcome.
Welcoming Qazi's arrival, he quoted Allawi as saying the country "needed the UN good offices, in both the political and economic fields".
Qazi, who arrived in Baghdad early Friday, is expected to attend Iraq's national conference scheduled to start on Sunday.
The diplomat also stressed the need for the conference to be as "inclusive of the range of Iraqi opinion as possible in order for its outcome to have maximum credibility among the Iraqi people," said a statement.
Qazi, a Pakistani diplomat, heads up a 30-strong UN team in the country and replaces Sergio Vieira de Mello as Annan's special representative in Iraq.
De Mello was among 22 people killed in a bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad last year, prompting the world body to withdraw foreign staff from Iraq.
Iraq's national conference aims to appoint a legislative body for Iraq's interim government.
Delegates drawn from various political movements, tribes and regions are to select a 100-member interim national council that will advise the government until elections, planned for next January, are held.