(agencies)
Updated: 2007-08-17 10:24

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the US-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.

US soldiers stand in front of a base before they start a night mission in Iraq in this June 28 , 2007. [Reuters]

The political gambit came as teams in northern Iraq tallied the grim figures from the deadliest wave of suicide attacks of the war and - in a rare moment of joy since Tuesday's devastation - pulled four children alive from the rubble.

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed the political agreement as a first step toward unblocking the paralysis that has gripped his Shiite-dominated government since it first took power in May 2006.

The new Shiite-Kurdish coalition will retain a majority in parliament - 181 of the 275 seats - and apparently have a clear path to pass legislation demanded by the Bush administration, including a law on sharing Iraq's oil wealth among Iraqi groups and returning some Saddam Hussein-era officials purged under earlier White House policies.

A crucial progress report by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and commander Gen. David Petraeus is due in Congress in less that a month. But a senior American Embassy official hesitated to join in al-Maliki's enthusiasm since the new alliance of Shiites and Kurds failed to bring in Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam and are now crucial to efforts for future stability.

The US official said "all three principle communities" in Iraq need to find ways to "make accommodations and compromises and ultimately reconciliation." The official spoke on condition he not be identified by name.

The key disappointment was the absence of Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and his moderate Iraqi Islamic Party. That portends even deeper political divisions, but al-Maliki called the agreement "a first step."

"It is not final and the door is still open for all who agree with us on the need to push the political process forward," he said.

Al-Maliki was joined at a news conference to announce the political grouping by President Jalal Talabani and fellow Kurd Massoud Barzani, the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region; and Shiite Vice President Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

They, along with the US ambassador, were said to have wooed al-Hashemi intensely to join the new leadership bloc. But officials in the al-Maliki government said the Sunni vice president wanted too much.

Among his demands was that members of his Iraqi Islamic Party fill all the Cabinet posts vacated by a mass resignation by another party, the Sunni Accordance Front, according to the officials, who spoke anonymously because the information was too sensitive to attach to their names.

The officials said al-Hashemi also wanted one of his loyalists to replace Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie.

In Baghdad, a car bomb struck a parking garage in a central commercial district during the morning rush hour, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, police said. Smoke poured out of the seven-story concrete building, and food and merchandise stalls below were left charred.

The US military also said three soldiers had been killed. Two soldiers died Wednesday and six were wounded in fighting north of Baghdad. The military said one soldier died Thursday in Baghdad of non-combat causes. At least 45 American troops have died this month.