BAGHDAD, 13 June 2006 — A conference on national reconciliation in Iraq, due to have opened on June 22, has been postponed until the first week of August, the Arab League said yesterday. “After talks, we have decided to set up a commission composed of representatives of the political parties,” the deputy secretary-general of the Arab League, Ahmed Ben Hilli of Algeria, told journalists.
“The commission will convene on July 1 to prepare for the conference, which will be held here in Baghdad during the first week of August,” he said. The Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference had been due to be held earlier this year, but was put off amid protracted talks on forming a new government after December’s parliamentary elections.
“We came to the conclusion that everyone wants more time to prepare for the conference, and to be sure that it will produce results,” Ben Hilli added. He held lengthy talks with Iraqi politicians, and said there had been agreement on a commission to prepare for the conference to a precise timetable, in collaboration with the Arab League and the United Nations. “The conference must take place because the more the violence escalates, the more urgent it becomes to have the conference,” Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on June 5.
Meanwhile, US-led forces in Iraq killed seven militants with links to senior Al-Qaeda leaders in a raid yesterday near the area where Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed last week, the US military said. Two children were also killed, including a 6-month-old boy, it said, adding there were several women and children at the scene.
A senior US military spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, said the gunmen had had the children with them on a roof and described their deaths as “extremely unfortunate.” A military statement said: “Coalition forces received enemy machinegun fire from a rooftop upon arriving at the objective. Coalition aircraft supporting the ground force immediately suppressed the enemy fire, killing seven,” it added. “Following the assault, coalition troops discovered two children had been killed.”
