UN Chief Visits Iraq Leaders

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad Saturday to call for reconciliation ahead of upcoming elections.

Annan arrived for his first visit since the U.S. invasion and met with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Deputy Prime Minister Rowsh Shaways, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, political and community leaders as well as U.N. staff.

Annan expressed his support for a national reconciliation conference, proposed by the Arab League, to be held in Cairo.

"Reconciliation is absolutely vital in Iraq," Annan said, adding that the U.N. supported all efforts to bring peace to the country.

Meanwhile, a Web site by former top Baath Party members reported Saturday that the highest ranking leader still at-large from Saddam Hussein's regime, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has died. The death could not be independently confirmed.

"In the pure land of Iraq, the soul of comrade Izzat Ibrahim returned to God on Friday at dawn," the Web site statement said. It described al-Douri as the "field commander of the heroic resistance" and was signed by the Baath party's "political media and publishing office."

The statement appeared Saturday on a Web site believed run by Salah al-Mukhtar, Iraq's ambassador to India before the collapse of the regime in April 2003 and former head of the External Information Department in Iraq.

An e-mail sent Friday to a Western news agency said al-Douri died at 2:30 a.m. Friday but gave no indication of the cause. Al-Douri had been in poor health for years.

Kofi Annan's visit follows similar visits by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Thursday and Secretary of State Condoleezza on Friday. Both Rice and Straw said they wanted to encourage participation in parliamentary elections scheduled for Dec. 15.

"The Secretary General's trip to Iraq and Jordan puts the proposed U.N. terrorism convention on the front burner," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk, "because the lesson learned from Iraq is that the U.S. cannot go it alone in the war on terror."

"Annan's work on the Hariri assassination investigation in Syria and Lebanon as well as in the Middle East peace talks and the Jordan attacks have enabled the Security Council to shape a global approach to fighting terror," Falk reported from the U.N. "With more regional interest in stopping arms flows to terror groups and cutting off financing, Annan's hand is strengthened to get a strong counter-terror convention passed."

Haitham al-Husseini, a spokesman for the predominantly Shiite party Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said Rice insisted that all groups participate in the upcoming election and to prepare for a national reconciliation conference.

The leaders of Iraq's predominantly Sunni insurgency have called for a boycott of the election.

But a Sunni Muslim politician who claims to have contacts with insurgent groups said Saturday some of its members will be running next month's elections and gave their demands and conditions to start peace talks with U.S. forces.

Ayham al-Samarie refused to say how many insurgents groups were planning to have candidates. He did not give further details and insurgent groups in the past have denied he represents them.

"The resistance should have an active role to help Iraq get out of its crisis," al-Samarie, a former electricity minister, told The Associated Press.

Minutes before al-Samarie spoke, a statement was distributed in his house that allegedly included the resistance's conditions to start peace talks.

The conditions included an immediate end to all military operations, release of all detainees, the withdrawal of foreign troops from cities and setting a timetable for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.

U.S. officials have patently rejected such conditions in the past.

In other developments: