BAGHDAD (Reuters):
A MAJOR Shi'ite religious ritual unfolded amid heavy security in the sacred city of Kerbala yesterday as the spectre of a sectarian civil war stalked Iraq on the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.
Nearly 10,000 troops and police guarded hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims gathered for Arbain, an annual mourning ritual banned under Saddam Hussein and which Sunni Arab suicide bombers have targeted in the past.
The fear of fresh communal bloodshed and the failure of Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders to form a national unity government that could avert civil war underlined Iraq's instability three years after Saddam's overthrow.
Despite calls from Washington for urgency in agreeing a cabinet, senior leaders will not now meet for the rest of the week due to public holidays and travel, officials said.
Instead of celebrating the success of their Iraq venture, Washington and its allies have been on the defensive, insisting that Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched three years ago to the day, will end in victory, although when is less certain than ever.
"Transiting from tyranny to democracy is never smooth or easy," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of America's main allies in the war.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said: "We have suffered during the past year ... The road ahead will be tough."
But in the article in the Washington Post, he added: "The world should not falter at such a crucial stage in history."
Iraq's leaders are still dead-locked over who will lead the first full-term post-war govern-ment three months after democratic polls that were meant to fulfill a main goal of the invasion.
A Sunni Arab insurgency against the U.S.-sponsored interim government also threa-tens to expand into a bloody sectarian conflict between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis.
Hundreds of people have been killed - many of them tortured, shot and their bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad - since the bombing of a major Shi'ite mosque on February 22.
Iraqi police reported 12 new bodies yesterday. A roadside bomb in the capital also killed three policemen and the three prisoners they were escorting, they said.
"The security situation in Iraq is serious ... and more people sadly have lost their lives than we predicted three years ago," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged.
