Sunni Arab leaders said they were prepared to end their boycott of the talks on a new government if Shi'ites return mosques seized in reprisal attacks against Sunnis and meet other unspecified demands.
''That crisis is over," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declared.
''I think the country came to the brink of a civil war, but the Iraqis decided that they didn't want to go down that path, and came together," Khalilzad told CNN. ''Clearly, the terrorists who plotted that attack wanted to provoke a civil war. It looked quite dangerous in the initial 48 hours, but I believe that the Iraqis decided to come together."
Also yesterday, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said they believe American journalist Jill Carroll remains alive the day after a deadline set by her captors passed with no word of her fate. A senior ministry official refused to say why they don't believe Carroll's captors carried out their threat to kill the 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor.
Today, Iraqi authorities will resume trial of Saddam Hussein and seven codefendants on crimes related to reprisals against the Shi'ite village of Dujayl.
Hussein's Iraqi lawyers said they will attend the session, a month after they walked out in protest and accused the chief judge of being biased against their client.
In Germany, the government denied a New York Times report that its intelligence service had passed information about Hussein's plans for defending Baghdad to the United States a month before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Times said a German intelligence officer supplied the information to the US Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2003.
''The Federal Intelligence Service and, therefore, also the government, had until now no knowledge of such a plan," said Ulrich Wilhelm, a German government spokesman.
The captured Al Qaeda figure was identified as Abou al-Farouq, a Syrian who financed and coordinated groups working for Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, according to an Interior Ministry officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.
