ISTANBUL, 1 May 2005 — Foreign ministers of countries neighboring Iraq voiced support yesterday for the new government in Baghdad and called for all Iraqi groups to join the political process in the country, in a joint declaration issued at the end of talks here.

Iraq’s six neighbors — Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — plus Egypt and Bahrain pledged “to support and cooperate with the newly elected Transitional National Government and ... to promote Iraqi transition to a united, democratic and pluralistic state, with a federal structure if so decided by the Iraqi people,” the statement said.

They also voiced hopes that Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s government and the other elected bodies in Iraq “will be fully instrumental in pursuing and completing the political transition ... in a manner which will ensure effective participation of the entire spectrum of the Iraqi people.”

The appeal was aimed mainly at the Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the January 30 polls and provide the backbone of the insurgency in Iraq. The statement condemned “terrorist acts” in Iraq and said the neighbors were determined “to increase their cooperation in the overall border security with Iraq ... with the primary aim of stemming terrorist and other illegal infiltrations to and from Iraq.”

The declaration confirmed the neighbors’ readiness to help in the training of Iraqi security forces and called for a greater UN involvement in the next stages of the political process in the country. It also stressed “the importance of bringing to justice all those in the leadership of the previous Iraqi regime who have committed crimes against humanity to the Iraqi people and war crimes against Iran and Kuwait.”

Meanwhile, at least six people were killed and 30 wounded in four separate car bombings in Iraq yesterday, three of them targeting army patrols. In one attack, a suicide driver plowed into a joint Iraqi-US military convoy, killing two civilians and wounding six, an Interior Ministry official told AFP. Police said four Iraqi soldiers were also wounded.

The attack near Maysalun Square came a day after two other car bombs targeted the same eastern Baghdad district, part of a wave of explosions that caused havoc in the greater Baghdad area on Thursday. The Al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement.

A second car bomb, possibly set off by a suicide attacker, exploded at around 2:30 p.m. (1030 GMT) outside a building where Sunni Arab politicians from the Council on National Dialogue were meeting, security officials said. One guard, sitting outside in a car, was killed, while 10 people, three of them guards, were wounded. The Sunni leaders escaped unharmed.

The council was one of a number of moderate Sunni groups that took part in negotiations for the new cabinet line-up unveiled Thursday, to the fury of insurgents and their hard-line supporters among the ousted elite. A third car bomb, set off by a suicide attacker at about 6 p.m. (1400 GMT), targeted a US military convoy near Al Shaab stadium in the east of the capital, police said.

It killed two civilians, wounded six and damaged four passing cars but the convoy escaped unscathed. In the main northern city of Mosul, a female passerby was killed and four Iraqi commandos wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle as a police convoy passed, police and medical sources said.

“A suicide car bomb targeted a police convoy in Zanjeeli, western Mosul, around 10:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) killing a woman passing by and wounding four police commandos,” police Maj. Mohammed Fathi told AFP.