Kurdish leaders were converging on Baghdad for last-minute talks Monday with majority Shiites as both sides pressed to secure a deal to form a coalition government before the newly elected parliament meets for the first time later this week. In northern Iraq, gunmen killed Hussam Hilal Sarsam, a Kurdish cameraman for the Kurdish satellite channel KurdSat, witnesses who saw his corpse transported by Iraqi troops outside the governor's office in Mosul said. Twenty kilometers (12 miles) south of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in Youssifiyah, said police Lt. Adnan Mohammed of the nearby Mahmudiyah hospital said. The blast missed a convoy of sport utility vehicles, hitting a civilian vehicle instead and wounding four civilians. In the capital, five bodyguards of Sa'ad al-Amily, the Health Ministry's director general, were wounded in a roadside bomb attack, a police captain said on condition of anonymity. The guards were heading to al-Amily's home to pick him up at the time, he said. Shiites and Kurds have been haggling over the makeup of the new government ever since the Jan. 30 ballot elected a new national assembly. Parliament meets Wednesday. The political deal calls for Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, to be named president. Conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the Shiite majority United Iraqi Alliance coalition, would become prime minister.
