IRAQ - Mar 19 - Leaders Look At Ways To Get Iraqis To Co-operate.

Iraqi political leaders meet to try to hammer out how a national unity government would work, temporarily putting aside the contentious question of who will lead it. Representatives of the main ethnic and sectarian blocs held talks at the Baghdad guesthouse of Kurdish Pres Jalal Talabani. Absent from the negotiations was PM Ibrahim Al Jaafari. Sunni and Kurd parties have said that they have no confidence in his ability to run the country and have called on the Shiite-led H UIA, of which he is leader, to choose another candidate for PM. Other members of the UIA were present, along with the Kurdistan Alliance, the Sunni Arab parties and the secular-leaning Iraqi List. The parties later announced agreement on the creation of a national security council - designed to bypass doubts about the UIA's leadership by allowing all the parties to review a broad range of policies when the new government is formed. The announcement allowed the parties to present the rare spectacle of Iraqi leaders announcing a breakthrough, however modest. The agreement "proves that civil war is not a prospect", said Talabani. He was responding to remarks by former PM Iyad Allawi broadcast earlier saying that civil war had already broken out. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is", Allawi, who also fronts the Iraqi List, told the BBC. Many Iraqis might agree with Allawi. Since the Feb 22 demolition of a Shiite shrine and the ensuing reprisal attacks, many Iraqis are afraid of leaving their own neighbourhoods and say they are relying on militias such as the radical Shiite Mahdi Army to protect them, rather than the police. But the shrine attack, widely seen to have brought the country close to all-out communal conflict, has combined with diplomatic pressure from the US to give new impetus to Iraqi politicians. For the past two weeks, the groups have held regular meetings to overcome the stand-off between the PM and his critics, which had derailed efforts to form a government after the Dec 15 elections. The new national security council addresses both the Kurds and the Sunnis' belief that the UIA, particularly under Jaafari, tends to ignore their input. It also allows the different groups the ability to supervise government institutions such as the interior ministry, which the Sunni say has become a fiefdom of Shiite hardliners. Sunni Arabs had called for its decisions to be binding, a provision vetoed by the Shiite, They argued that a more powerful body would fall outside the lines set by the constitution. They are also reportedly concerned that it would dilute the power of the PM. "What has been decided was exactly the same proposal that the UIA put forward from the very beginning...The decisions are not binding...[rather] recommendations", Shiite negotiator Hussain al-Shahristani told the FT.