Iraqi president rejects calls for international advice

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's president on Sunday rejected suggestions that an international conference be held to address the violence wracking his country, echoing sentiments expressed by other leading politicians.\n"We are an independent and a sovereign nation, and it is we who decide the fate of the nation," President Jalal Talabani said after meeting with Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.\nThe U.S. military, meanwhile, reported that nine Americans died in weekend fighting in the Baghdad area and restive Anbar province, west of the capital.\nA U.S. airstrike flattened a building in Iraq's volatile west, killing two women and a toddler during combat that also killed six militants, the military said Sunday. It was the latest of several recent raids that have caused casualties among women and children.\nTalabani, a Kurd, holds a largely ceremonial post. But his comments echoed those voiced by other politicians, including a leader from Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, which is the dominant force in the U.S.-backed government.\nForeign Minister Hoshyar Zebari questioned the aim of the international conference suggested last week by outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Zebari said it would only be welcome if it supported current efforts to solve Iraq's security problems and assist the government.\n"Is it to take the political process back to square one and review all that is done in the past three years? If this is the aim, then we reject it," said Zebari, also a Kurd.\nAbdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's top Shiite politicians, rejected the idea Saturday while in Amman, Jordan, saying it would be unrealistic to debate Iraq's future outside the country. He said Iraq's government was the only party qualified to find solutions.\nBut former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite with close Washington links, disagreed, saying Iraq cannot solve its problems alone.\n"It needs the participation and support of everyone, and that's a debt owed to the people of Iraq by foreign nations -- to support Iraq and stop the bloodshed," he said in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV.\nIn an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. to be aired Monday, Annan said the level of violence in Iraq was much worse than other recent civil wars. He also agreed that the average Iraqi's life is worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein's regime.\n"Given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other, a few years ago when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse," Annan said, according to a transcript of the interview released by the BBC Sunday night.\nMeanwhile, the U.S. military said the airstrike deaths occurred during a hunt for foreign fighters, saying intelligence reports had verified men were inside the attacked buildings. U.S. forces have accused militants of taking over buildings as safe houses and using civilians as human shields.\nCoalition ground and air units killed six insurgents and captured three while destroying the two buildings in Karmah in Anbar province, the military said. In the wreckage of one, troops also found a weapons cache and the bodies of two women and a boy believed to be younger than 2, the military said.\nDr. Abdul-Hakim al-Dulaimi, director of the emergency room at Karmah Hospital, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, said 12 bodies were brought in Sunday morning: nine Iraqi men, two women in their 40s and a 3-year-old boy.\nThe pilot of an F-16 fighter jet that went down elsewhere in Anbar last Monday was declared killed in action by the U.S. Air Force on Sunday. It said DNA analysis had confirmed remains found at the crash site 20 miles northwest of Baghdad were those of Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, 34.\nThe U.S. military also announced the combat deaths of nine Americans -- one in Baghdad and two north of Baghdad on Sunday, one near Taji north of the capital Saturday and five in Anbar province on Saturday.\nSaddam Hussein's lawyers formally appealed the death sentence imposed on their client after he was convicted in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims.\nFive Iraqi judges sentenced Saddam and two other senior members of his regime to death by hanging Nov. 5 for the killings of residents from Dujail, a town north of Baghdad where an assassination attempt was made on Saddam in 1982.\nUnder Iraqi law, death sentences are automatically appealed to a higher court within 10 days of their passage. But defense lawyers must file a formal appeal within 30 days, detailing the legal grounds for their action and presenting any new evidence that could support their clients' claims of innocence. The lawyers could also make a plea for leniency.\nSaddam's chief lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said two lawyers on the defense team had submitted the papers. He complained that defense lawyers had not received copies of the verdict until Nov. 23, delaying the appeal.\n"Finally we were able to do it," al-Dulaimi said. "We had to hastily prepare the appeal because the court procrastinated in giving us the documents necessary for the submission in a bid to obstruct the appeal process."\nSaddam's second trial on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from a military crackdown on Iraq's Kurd population in 1987-88 resumes Monday.\nCar bombs and other attacks killed at least 18 people across Iraq.\nAt least 71 bodies -- apparent victims of sectarian death squads -- also were found, including 51 in Baghdad, 16 in Baqouba and four south of the capital.\nOne of the bodies in Baghdad was that of Hadib Majhoul, the Sunni Arab chairman of one of Iraq's leading soccer clubs who had been kidnapped three days earlier in the city.