Iraq's leading parties said on Sunday they had failed to reach a deal to form a new government before the first meeting of parliament, crushing hopes a much-needed cabinet would start to tackle relentless violence. Iraqi Deputy President Rowsch Shways said talks between the Shia alliance that won landmark elections and Kurds who came second would resume after parliament's opening session on Wednesday to hammer out differences.
"The talks will continue and there are some important points that deserve more discussion," Fouad Massoum, a Kurd and interim parliamentary speaker, said in the northern city of Arbil.
Some of his party's members were less optimistic. Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani's chief aide said: "The negotiations between the two sides have hit a dead end."
Parliament's meeting on Wednesday will take place more than six weeks after polls that gave many in Iraq hope a new authority would clamp down on suicide attacks, car bombs and execution-style killings by mainly Sunni Arab insurgents.
Four bodies, three Iraqi soldiers and one policeman, were found on a farm in Latafiya, some 70 km (40 miles) south of the capital. An army officer said they had been shot in the head and chest two days ago. Their hands had been tied.
POLITICAL VACUUM: Many Iraqis blame politicians, for whom they say they risked their lives to vote in the January 30 elections, for prolonging a political vacuum while violence spirals.
Officials said earlier the two sides had yet to agree on how to distribute top government posts and on extending the Kurds' autonomous region in the north.
Ahmad Chalabi, a top member of the Shiae bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, returned empty handed on Saturday from a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan to save the proposed Kurdish-Shia alliance which has the two-thirds majority needed to form a government.
"The meetings have collapsed. There was no deal," an aide to Chalabi told Reuters.
Kurdish politicians were defiant, rejecting the Shia alliance's attempts to blame them for the deadlock.
"They want to lay the responsibility for the political equation solely on the Kurdish side," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd, told Al Arabiya television.
The Kurds, who number about 3 million out of Iraq's 27 million people, want the presidency for Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, and a top ministry - interior, finance or defence.
ALLAWI CARETAKER ROLE: The stand-off plays into the hands of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose cabinet could now remain in a caretaker role until a general election due at the end of the year.
Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam, largely boycotted the election and have little representation in the new assembly.
On Saturday, a suicide car bomber at a checkpoint in Sharqat south of Mosul killed six Iraqi soldiers. Regional army commander Lieutenant-Colonel Talal Mohammed said on Sunday the army had arrested a Yemeni in connection with the attack.
The Association of Muslim Clerics, a leading Sunni group, complained on Sunday US troops had searched the home of its leader for the second time in a week.