The invading forces led by the US in Iraq has begun their efforts to shape the future government of Iraq by holding talks with country's religious and opposition political leaders.

According to Reuters news agency, the talks began yesterday under a tent pitched near the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, outside the southern city of Nasiriya.

The report said that some key groups had boycotted the meeting, which is the first in a series of meetings that will be held throughout Iraq in the coming weeks.

The meeting was attended by 80 Iraqis who agreed o­n a 13-point statement that advocated turning Iraq into a federal democracy and outlawing the Baath Party, through which Saddam Hussein maintained iron control for more than two decades.

Reuters

reported that the statement said Iraqis must choose their own leaders, not have them imposed from outside. Little else was agreed except that the delegates should reconvene in 10 days at a location yet to be decided.

"We want you to establish your own democratic system based o­n Iraqi traditions and values," President Bush's special envoy o­n the region, Zalmay Khalilzad ( photo ), was quoted as saying.

"I urge you to take this opportunity to cooperate with each other."

'No to occupation'

One of the group that boycotted the meeting was a major Iran-based Shi'ite Muslim group.

"We cannot be part of a process which is under an American general," Reuters quoted a spokesman for the Iran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who explained its boycott and referring to retired US Gen Jay Garner ( blue shirt ), the man President Bush has named to head an interim administration

According to a BBC report, returned Iraqi exiles and representatives of Iraq's main ethnic groups agreed to meet again in 10 days.

The Washington Post

said that outside the meeting tent, which was protected by barbed wire and armed Marines, dozens of uninvited political figures denounced the gathering as illegitimate and unrepresentative of long-established Iraqi groups opposed to former president Saddam Hussein.

"Thousands of Iraqi Shiites shouting 'No to occupation!' staged a noisy protest against the US-sponsored talks, said the daily.

Looters under arrest

Meanwhile, US troops have started joint patrols with Iraqi security forces in Baghdad a bid to restore order to the capital hit by looting and violence after the fall of the Saddam regime.

Associated Press reported that the courtyard of Baghdad's town hall is filling up with some of the city's looters, o­n their knees, heads covered with cloth sacking and hands tied behind their backs.

The hall has been converted by US forces into a prison for those Baghdadis who were caught indiscriminately ransacking their city in the days after the Iraqi strongman's regime collapsed.

US marines have deployed tanks, Humvees and jeeps around the courtyard between two town hall buildings. Some heavily armed soldiers stretch out o­n the grass while others take aim at nine sweating looters, barefoot and in rags, trussed and with heads lowered, said the AP report..

"One prisoner is pushed roughly to the floor. A marine pulls the detainee's shirt up over his head so he can't see what's going o­n in the complex. He is made to lie out in the dust, as his fellow looters are."

Although situation in Baghdad seemed to have return to normal with traders returning to markets ( photo ), looting is still taking place.

Coalition newspaper

The latest place to fall victim to the looting is the National Library in Baghdad. Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted the library, leaving a smoldering shell of precious books turned to ash and a nation's intellectual legacy gone up in smoke, reported AP .

According to AP , the locals also looted and burned Iraq's principal Islamic library nearby, home to priceless old Qurans; last week, thieves swept through the National Museum and stole or smashed treasures that chronicled this region's role as the "cradle of civilization."

"Our national heritage is lost," an angry high school teacher, Haithem Aziz, was quoted as saying as he stood outside the National Library's blackened hulk.

In a related development, the US soldiers started distributing a daily Arabic language broadsheet newspaper that is produced by coalition forces ( photo ).