Iraq’s senior Kurdish statesman called for direct talks with Turkey today and warned that any aggression would be resisted.

Iraq’s prime minister called a crisis conference in a bid to reach open a dialogue tomorrow among Iraq’s divided factions, to shore up his shaky government and unstick the stalled political process.

Kurdish rebels fired rockets and grenades at a Turkish military outpost, killing seven soldiers.

TURKEY’S top general yesterday said the military was ready to stage a cross-border offensive to fight Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq and that he already had sought government approval to mount military action.

Bomb blasts in two areas of Iraq today left at least 49 people dead and dozens more wounded.

A parked car exploded near a market in central Baghdad on today, killing at last 11 people and wounding about 40, police said.

At least nine soldiers were killed today in a suicide car bomb attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Iraq.

At least 27 people were killed and 59 wounded in three suicide bomb attacks in Iraq today.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is recovering well from his weekend collapse from exhaustion and a pulmonary inflammation, the Iraqi ambassador said in Jordan today.

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani fell ill yesterday and was taken unconscious to a hospital before being flown to neighbouring Jordan for a medical check-up, medical and government officials said.

A court in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein heard harrowing accounts today that the former Iraqi leader’s forces beheaded a mentally-ill Kurdish man and pushed three other Kurds out of a helicopter in mid-air during a crackdown 20 years ago.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the autonomous and oil-rich Kurdish region of northern Iraq today, less than two weeks after the regional government threatened to break away from Iraq in a dispute over oil.

A series of bombings and mortar attacks – including two suicide bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk, killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80 today.

A suicide truck bomb exploded in the city of Kirkuk today killing at least 12 people and wounding another 55, police said.

Two bombs went off within minutes of each other today in northern Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 39.

Leaders of Iraq’s main political blocs began a round of marathon meetings today with the US ambassador in an attempt to reach agreement on a broad-based government.

Bombings and shootings yesterday killed at least 17 people around Iraq, while President Jalal Talabani issued a decree ordering the new parliament to hold its first session on March 19.

Iraq President Jalal Talabani issued a decree today that orders Iraq’s new parliament to hold its first session on March 19, the president’s chief of staff said.

MUNICIPAL workers in the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala have found remains believed to be from a mass grave dating to 1991, when Saddam Hussein’s regime put down a Shi’ite uprising in the south.

Insurgents killed at least 10 people in attacks around Iraq today, including five police officers killed at a checkpoint.

Campaigning came to a stop today around Iraq to give the country’s 15 million voters an opportunity to reflect before deciding who will govern their country for the next four years.

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will face charges of premeditated murder, torture and forced expulsion and disappearances when he goes on trial next week for a 1982 massacre of Shiites, a court official said today.

Iraqi politicians are scrambling to reach a deal as today’s deadline to finish the country’s new constitution looms.

A blinding sandstorm in Baghdad forced the postponement of a meeting scheduled by Iraqi political leaders to discuss issues blocking agreement on a new constitution, President Jalal Talabani’s office announced.

Iraqi police battled with and killed two gunmen in the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early today, a day after a suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded nearly 100 after striking outside a bank as elderly people waited to cash their pension cheques.

Former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein faces a range of charges from gassing thousands of Kurds to executing political and religious leaders, a list of the cases against him showed today.

Sunni Muslim politicians have dropped their demand to include former members of Saddam Hussein’s party in Iraq’s new cabinet in a bid to get more ministries.

IRAQI politicians tried again yesterday to end a near three-month deadlock over forming a new transitional government, as the death toll from car bombings targeting police and civilians in Saddam Hussein’s hometown and Baghdad rose to 29.

Weeping relatives gathered in small groups to bury 50 people killed by a suicide bomber in the northern Iraq city Mosul, after cancelling a mass funeral procession for fear of another attack.

An Iranian envoy headed to the Iraqi holy city of Najaf today on a mission to end the American stand-off with a radical Shiite cleric.

THE spiritual guide of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim majority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, yesterday called the country’s new transitional law an obstacle to a permanent constitution.

The first post-Saddam Hussein governing body of Iraqis will hold its inaugural meeting today, a watershed event on the nation’s path to democracy, said the top US administrator, promising the council will have “real political power”.

A council of up to nine Iraqis will probably lead the country’s still unformed interim government through the coming months, the American civil administrator said today.

The retired American general given the huge task of reconstructing post-war Iraq today visited the country’s northern Kurdish region.

US FORCES tightened their cordon around Baghdad last night as hospitals were engulfed with casualties from heavy bombing.

The Iraqi National Congress (INC): Founded in 1992 as an umbrella group for other exiled opposition groups, the INC has since faced claims it acts unilaterally as its own party.