Iraqi leaders agree in principle to unity Govt

DOKHAN, Iraq, Friday (AFP) Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim said that they agree on the need to enlarge the next government's cabinet to include representatives of other communities.

"The Kurdish coalition and the Shiite alliance agree in principle on a government of national unity," the Kurdish Talabani told reporters after a meeting in Dokhan, a vacation town 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

However, he specified that such a plan would have restrictions.

"The other parties must believe in certain principles," including "rejection of terrorism," he said, adding that prominent Sunni Arab politican Saleh al-Motlaq "cannot be with the terrorists by night and with us by day."

Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and member of the Shiite coalition holding a majority of seats in the current parliament, praised the "strategic alliance" between Kurds and Shiites.

"Our alliance does not signify exclusion of others and is not directed against anyone," said Hakim, whose conservative Shiite list is widely expected to take a majority of parliamentary seats after the December 15 election.

Meanwhile in an illustration of the size of the task the politicians face, 11 members of a Shi'ite family had their throats slit in an attack south of Baghdad. Police said insurgents had warned the family to move out of their largely Sunni neighbourhood.

With Sunni politicians angry about the election results and Shi'ites seeking to press home their advantage after dominating the Dec. 15 poll, the meeting between Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and President Jalal Talabani in the Kurdish mountain resort of Dukan had been billed as a key encounter.

As Talabani and Hakim met in the calm of the Kurdish mountains, violence persisted elsewhere. In the latest of several overtly sectarian attacks, six assailants broke into a house south of Baghdad and killed 11 members of the same Shi'ite family by slitting their throats.

A suicide bomber killed four policemen and wounded five when he blew himself up at a checkpoint near the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, and a police chief was seriously wounded in a gun attack near Falluja.

A sabotage attack in northern Iraq and bad weather in the south halted the country's oil exports, while an oil refinery north of Baghdad was forced to shut down for security reasons. Fuel shortages have increased popular frustration with successive Iraqi governments.