Sunday, February 19, 2006
Officials from the Shiite and Kurdish blocs said talks had revealed major policy differences.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi political parties have run into major obstacles in talks on a new national unity government, officials said Sunday, raising the possibility of a major delay that would be a setback to U.S. hopes for a significant reduction in troop levels this year.
In northeastern Iraq, search parties alerted by a shepherd found wreckage of a German private plane that went missing in bad weather three days earlier with five Germans and one Iraqi on board. Iraqi and U.S. officials said there was no sign of survivors.
Gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks carrying construction material to the U.S. military north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing four Iraqi drivers. A police general also died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq.
U.S. officials hope a new government that includes representatives of all Iraq's religious and ethnic communities can help calm violence by luring the Sunni Arab minority away from the Sunni-dominated insurgency so that U.S. and other foreign troops can begin to head home.
Appear in doubt
But prospects for a broad-based coalition taking power soon appeared in doubt after officials from the Shiite and Kurdish blocs told The Associated Press that talks between the two groups had revealed major policy differences.
The political parties have decided to negotiate a program for the new government before dividing up Cabinet posts -- a step that itself is also bound to prove contentious and time-consuming.
Forming a new governing coalition is crucial to the U.S. strategy for drawing down its forces in Iraq. Under the new constitution, the new government is supposed to be complete by mid-May, but some U.S. officials believe the process could take longer.
A long delay could affect American plans to hand over more security responsibility to the Iraqi military -- a move that could be risky without a civilian government in place.
The wrecked German plane had been en route to Iraq from Azerbaijan carrying five Germans and an Iraqi -- employees of a Bavarian construction company -- when it went missing during stormy weather Thursday night over the rugged mountains near the border with Iran.
Shahou Mohammed, the regional administrator in Sulaimaniyah, said the wreckage was found about 25 miles northeast of Sulaimaniyah by a Kurdish shepherd tending his flocks on a 4,200-foot ridge.
In Baghdad, U.S. Embassy official Peter McHugh said an American adviser who accompanied the Iraqi search team reported from the scene that the aircraft wreckage was scattered over a fairly large area and "there appear to be no survivors."
"Everything I've seen suggests this is an aviation accident," and was not the result of any "hostile intervention," he said.
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