NEW YORK: US President George W Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki yesterday that his government must do more to help advance national reconciliation.
Meeting Maliki on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly session, Bush pressed the Iraqi leader on getting parliament to pass laws aimed at healing bitter sectarian divisions more than four years after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
"The Iraqi side is fully prepared to assume all the responsibilities and work for a better future for all of Iraq," Maliki said.
In a related development, a dozen anti-war protesters were arrested during a peaceful demonstration outside the United Nations where Bush gave his address.
The Bush-Maliki meeting came after a deadly shooting involving Blackwater contractors who provide security for the US embassy in Baghdad. But neither Bush nor Maliki responded to a shouted question about whether Blackwater was discussed.
Iraq's Interior Ministry has finished draft legislation that would end legal immunity for private security contractors in the wake of the September 16 shooting in which 11 people were killed while Blackwater was escorting a US embassy convoy through Baghdad.
Bush reiterated that pulling out US troops from Iraq would depend on the success of the mission there.
A spate of powerful car and suicide bombings, meanwhile, killed more than 44 people and wounded more than 100 in less than 24 hours across Iraq, shattering what had been a relatively calm holy month of Ramadan.
Security and health officials in Baghdad said a double car bombing yesterday killed six people and wounded at least 20, while a suicide car bomber in Basra killed three policemen. The death toll in Baquba mosque bombing rose to 28.
Saboteurs also blew up a pipeline carrying natural gas to a power station northwest of Kirkuk causing a major fire, security officials said.
A roadside bomb killed a US soldier yesterday in Diyala province, the military said.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, meanwhile, warned that "contagion" could spread from Iraq across the Middle East, urging the West to talk to all the country's neighbours to head off the threat.
"We need to work with all the neighbours of Iraq to reconcile Sunnis and Shias, to prevent that conflict first fragmenting the country and then spreading like a contagion across the Middle East," he said.
Iraq's interior minister was in Turkey yesterday to discuss Turkish concerns over separatist Kurdish rebels holed up in bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey is seeking an anti-terrorism co-operation agreement with Iraq that would engage its neighbour in cracking down on the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been attacking targets in Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.
Earlier in the day, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani declared the arrest in northern Iraq of an Iranian national by US forces "illegal" and again demanded his release.
"We have asked the US authorities to release the arrested man," Talabani said.
In another development, the World Health Organisation said yesterday that more than 2,100 people in Iraq have cholera which is spreading across the country.
