Talabani 'ready for talks' with opposition

IRAQ'S president indicated yesterday that he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Ba'ath Party.

He also called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.

But President Jalal Talabani, in Cairo for the Arab League-sponsored conference, insisted the Iraqi government would not meet Ba'ath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency and attacking Iraqi and US-led forces in the country.

"I am the president of Iraq and I am responsible for all Iraqis. If those who describe themselves as Iraqi resistance want to contact me, they are welcome," Mr Talabani told reporters.

"I want to listen to all Iraqis. I am committed to listen to them, even those who are criminals and are on trial."

One Shi'ite leader, who declined to be identified by name fearing political repercussions, said: "This is a unilateral move which has not coordinated with us."

In western Baghdad over the weekend, hundreds of marching Iraqis - mostly Sunnis - demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and US authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur.

Anger over detainee abuse has increased sharply since US troops found 173 detainees at an Interior Ministry prison in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighbourhood. The detainees, mainly Sunnis, were found malnourished and some had torture marks on their bodies. Sunni Arabs dominate the insurgent ranks.

Carrying posters of tortured detainees, disfigured dead bodies and US troops detaining locals, the nearly 400 demonstrators marched from the office of the Front for National Dialogue, a Sunni political group, a few hundred yards into the western neighbourhood of Jamia before dispersing peacefully.

Ali al-Saadoun, of the Sunni Muslim group, told the demonstrators: "We condemn torture and we call on the United Nations and the international community to put pressure on the Iraqi government and the Americans. We want all the detainees released."

The demonstration came as Iraqi officials met in Egypt at a reconciliation conference organised by the Arab League.

Iraq's Shi'ite-led government has promised an investigation and punishment for anyone guilty of torture. Attacks against Shi'ite civilians by Sunni religious extremists have occurred throughout the Iraq conflict but spiked since the detainees were found last weekend.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated his car in a crowd of Shi'ite mourners north of Baghdad, killing at least 36 people and raising the death toll in two days of attacks against Shi'ites to more than 120.

The London-based Al Hayat newspaper reported that Mr Talabani had received proposals from insurgent groups and that their "conditions" were being reviewed in coordination with the Pentagon and American officials at the Cairo conference.

The three-day meeting in Cairo opened yesterday in an attempt to patch over ethnic and religious fault lines and address the contentious issue of who would participate in a larger reconciliation conference planned for January.

Leaders of Iraq's Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish communities are struggling with serious differences over power sharing, the 30-month insurgency and the future of the US troops in Iraq.

Sunni leaders, who were dominant under the Saddam regime, are pressing ahead with demands that the Shi'ite-majority government should agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops and broad amendments to the constitution which was ratified on October 15.

In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said commanders' assessments will determine the pace of any military drawdown.

About 160,000 US troops are in Iraq as the country approaches parliamentary elections on December 15.

The Pentagon has said it plans to scale back troop strength to its pre-election baseline of 138,000, depending on conditions.

Britain's Defence Ministry said a British soldier was killed and four were wounded in a roadside bombing near Basra in southern Iraq. The death brings the number of British troops killed in Iraq to 98, the ministry said.