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Baghdad: Iraq's Prime Minister met on Sunday with the Sunni Vice-President to discuss reintegrating Sunni political parties into his Shiite-dominated government as five people died in clashes and a suicide car bombing in Baghdad, police said.
The meeting between Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and Tariq Al Hashemi came a day after the Sunni leader described the return of his boycotting political bloc, the National Accordance Front, to the Cabinet as a priority.
The two men discussed "the future of the political process and the rebuilding of a national and unified government", according to a statement from the presidency office.
On Saturday, Al Hashemi said the government needs to reconcile quickly to "save Iraq".
Internal power struggle
But Sunni officials have said internal power struggles within the Front over who should be appointed to which posts have delayed a formal decision.
Al Hashemi has been one of Al Maliki's most bitter critics, accusing him of sectarian favouritism, while the Prime Minister has complained that the Vice-President is blocking key legislation. But Al Hashemi and other Sunni leaders apparently have been swayed by Al Maliki's crackdown against Shiite militias.
Al Maliki also has threatened to politically isolate anti-US cleric Moqtada Al Sadr if the Mahdi Army is not disbanded.
Sporadic clashes continued yesterday in Sadr City.
An Iraqi military spokesman said over the past month, militants had fired a total of 712 missiles and mortar rounds inside Baghdad. "They were all Iranian-made brought into Iraq in many ways," Brig Gen Qasem Al Mousawi told reporters. He did not elaborate on how the security forces had determined the origin of the exploded munitions.
Iraqi police said two people were killed and 12 injured in Sadr City in exchanges of fire between joint Iraqi-US forces and fighters of the Mahdi army.
Four of the injured in the clashes early yesterday were young children, said an officer who declined to identify himself because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The police officer said US Apache helicopters were circling the area and providing support to the government forces. But a US military statement said an unmanned drone had killed a total of five militants in three separate engagements.
Police said five people died and 14 were wounded in a clash between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi and American forces in the southern suburb of Maalif. But the US military denied that its forces had been engaged there.
Al Qaida threat
Elsewhere in Baghdad, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint in the eastern neighbourhood of Zayouna killing three people and injuring nine, a police officer said.
US spokesman Rear Adm Patrick Driscoll said a series of recent car bombings and suicide attacks showed that Al Qaida in Iraq remains "a very lethal threat" and said the military would continue to pursue the insurgents "with great intensity".
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