Bombers seek civil war

Insurgents killed four US soldiers and eight other Iraqis, including a child, in separate attacks Thursday across the country.

The US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in the northern town of Samarra, the military said, taking to around 50 the US military deaths across Iraq in August, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The total US military deaths in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion reached 1,856 Thursday, according to Pentagon figures.

Shattering the capital's relative calm of recent weeks, at least 43 people were killed Wednesday when three car bombs ripped through a central Baghdad bus station and a nearby hospital.

Baghdad said the bombings were aimed at triggering a civil war.

"The bombs exploded in a Shia dominated area of Baghdad, and the message that they (rebels) wanted to send was that the government is incapable of protecting you (Shias) from them," government spokesman Leith Kubba said.

"Such a criminal act will definitely arouse passion among Shias -- they (insurgents) want the Shias to attack the Sunnis and that will serve the insurgents' purpose. They want to trigger sectarian crisis."

Iraq's ousted Sunni Arab elite is believed to form the backbone of the raging insurgency that has ravaged Iraq since the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Wednesday's bombings came two days after Iraqi leaders failed to draft a new constitution, due to be put to a referendum in October, and a key phase in Iraq's political transition which the United States and its allies hope could pave the way to a pullout of foreign troops.

Meanwhile, Putin called for an international conference on Iraq by year's end and a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, saying they were considered "occupying forces" by many Iraqis.

"We consider that holding an international conference this year would give a new impulse to the normalisation of the situation" in Iraq, Putin said.

Russia has a long history of close ties with Iraq and was among the leading critics of the US-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman rejected Putin's call for a timetable on withdrawal and withheld comment on his proposal for an international conference.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack echoed President George W. Bush's refusal to lay out a calendar for withdrawing the 138,000 American troops in Iraq.

The spokesman added that a Russian delegation already attended an international conference on Iraqi reconstruction June 22 in Brussels.

A top Western diplomat closely involved with the constitution drafting process said the deadline could be extended again.