BAGHDAD - Kurdish and Shiite politicians met in a last-minute effort to form a governing coalition ahead of the historic opening session of Iraq`s new parliament, while eight people were killed in attacks.
"They need to overcome their differences," said Adnan Ali, an aide to the Shiite candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, after the fresh round of talks Monday.
Earlier in the day, Kurdish chieftain Jalal Talabani said negotiations with Iraq`s election-winning Shiite list were at an impasse over Kurdish demands on Kirkuk and the status of their peshmerga fighters.
"There are disagreements about two points. The first is the fate of the peshmerga, and the second one is concerning Kirkuk. Our negotiations with the (Shiite) alliance continue," Talabani told reporters as he announced he was heading to Baghdad for Wednesday`s session of the 275-member national assembly.
Talabani, the frontrunner for Iraq`s presidency, was speaking after Kurdish leaders said Sunday they were insisting on changes to a draft agreement setting out the terms for an alliance with the Shiites` United Iraqi Alliance, which has the largest share of seats in the new parliament with 146 members.
The Kurds, long oppressed by Iraq`s Arab majority, want iron-clad commitments that their tens of thousands of peshmerga fighters will continue to provide security in the three Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dahuk and Sulaimaniyah.
They want no other Iraqi force to be allowed to enter the virtual autonomous zone without the Kurdish regional government`s permission.
The Kurds also want concrete pledges that the new government will resettle the tens of thousands of Kurds expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein over three decades and that it will work to restore territory to Kirkuk that Saddam apportioned to other provinces.
For their part, the Shiites, poised for their first real taste of political power, are eager to reach out to Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, Christians and Turkmen as a means to stave off the threat of the country sliding into civil war.
The Shiites need the Kurds` 77 seats in parliament to muster the two-thirds majority required in the legislative body to elect a presidency council which in turn nominates the prime minister.
The plodding negotiations, six weeks after milestone national elections, have triggered a wave of criticism from Shiite religious leaders who have demanded the government be put in place to tackle the resistance behind daily attacks.
Outgoing president Ghazi al-Yawar said Monday he has formed a committee of leading Sunni Muslim figures, including elder statesman Adnan Pachachi and Tareq al-Hashemi, secretary general of the Islamic Party, to negotiate for posts in the government.
Sunnis garnered a paltry 15-20 seats in the parliament due to a boycott by large segments of the community of the January 30 elections out of antipathy for Iraq`s post-Saddam order.
Even as Kurds and Shiites attempted to woo the Sunni bloc, a US official warned the problem with the embittered minority was that they were speaking with many voices, without a single bloc to represent them.
Insurgents, made up of different elements of Iraq`s Sunni minority, alienated by the rise of Shiites and Kurds, carried out a fresh wave of attacks Monday.
An Iraqi cameraman, Husam Hilal Sarsam, working for a Kurdish-language television station was gunned down in the northern city of Mosul, hospital sources said.
A pair of Iraqi farmers were killed and two others wounded when a car bomb targeting a US military convoy exploded in Rashid, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
Meanwhile, Tareq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein`s jailed right-hand men who is being investigated for crimes against humanity, issued a handwritten plea asking the international community to ensure he receives a fair trial, his son told AFP.
Aziz, former Iraqi deputy prime minister and the international face of Iraq under Saddam`s regime, surrendered in April 2003 shortly after Baghdad fell to the Americans.
Relatives of a Sudanese national kidnapped in Iraq last week, Mohammad Harun Hammad, appealed Monday to his captors to release him, Sudanese media said.
"I appeal to the captors to set free my brother Mohammad, the breadwinner of his family, who has no political leanings," one of his brothers was quoted as saying.
At the same time, security forces have arrested two figures close to Saddam Hussein in the jailed dictator`s northern hometown of Tikrit.
"On March 8, 2005, security forces, based on information from local Iraqis, captured the terrorists Abdullah Maher Abdul Rasheed, Marwan Taher Abdul Rasheed, and two others" in Tikrit, the government said in a statement.
In the Netherlands, friends and family members welcomed home nearly 150 Dutch soldiers who returned from Iraq, where their 1,400-strong contingent is to be replaced by British troops.
03/15/2005 00:43 GMT