The head of Iraq's governing council met the country's most revered Shia Muslim cleric today to try to overcome his objections to a new US plan for the transfer of power to Iraqis.
The approval of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is reported to believe the plan is insufficiently Islamic and sidelines the role of Iraqis, is crucial for winning backing for the US timetable from Iraq's 60% Shia Muslim majority.
A spokesman for Jalal Talabani, current president of the US-backed governing council, said he would argue that the handover proposal - which envisages a sovereign government by July and democratic elections by the end of 2005 - deals with the cleric's objections.
Mr Talabani's son and aide Qubad told Reuters: "This is an opportunity to discuss the details of the plan, to inform him of the process and to inform him that the coalition and governing council went to great lengths to address his concern that the constitution be from an elected body."
He added: "We are not convinced that his so-called reservations are in fact that, since they are being relayed by third parties".
A spokesman for the US-led coalition in Baghdad declined to comment on Mr al-Sistani's reported remarks, saying the head of the administration, Lieutenant Paul Bremer, had no wish "to negotiate in public".
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the spokesman told the Associated Press that the November 15 accord was a "framework" agreement and that "a lot of difficult details must still be worked out."
Foreign secretary Jack Straw said such a power transfer was crucial to making Iraq safer. Mr Straw, on a two-day visit to the country, said: "The more that we can give all Iraqis a stake in their future and a stable political architecture in which to work, the more I believe more Iraqis will become committed to that future and fewer will think that terror... is the way forward."
In Washington, meanwhile, US defence officials announced that several thousand additional US marines would head to Iraq next year.
The Pentagon previously said that the total number of US troops in Iraq would add up to about 105,000 after troop rotations are completed in May, but the additional marines appear to bump up that total to 110,000. Washington currently has 130,000 troops in Iraq.
The announcement came as news emerged of the latest attacks against foreign interests in Iraq, underlining the precarious security situation.
Attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian embassy in Baghdad late yesterday. Officials said the embassy was damaged, but no one was hurt in the attack.
Early today, a US military convoy came under attack on the main highway west of Baghdad near the town of Abu Ghraib, witnesses said. An Associated Press Television News cameraman filmed two flatbed military trucks that were abandoned and left with their cabs blazing fiercely, as dozens of townspeople converged to loot tires and other vehicle parts. The military had no immediate information.
And in the northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen today shot dead an Iraqi police sergeant, according to a senior officer cite by AP.
In another development, an Iraqi general died while under interrogation, the US military said today.
Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, an air defence general captured on October 5 in a raid near the Syrian border, was being questioned yesterday in Qaim also near the border with Syria, when he lost consciousness after complaining he felt unwell, the military said in a statement.
He was pronounced dead by a US military physician. The cause of death is under investigation, the military said.
