Iraqi political leaders agreed on Saturday to continue efforts to form a new government and defuse soaring sectarian violence that claimed the lives of at least 160 people in the past few days.

The late Saturday night meeting gathered Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Sunni politicians.

"We have all agreed that the political process should be accelerated without any delay," al-Jaafari told reporters after the talks that lasted for some three hours.

"Terrorism is the only enemy for all the Iraqi people," he said, adding that Iraq was far away from a civil war due to sectarian disputes.

The leaders, including Sunni politicians who previously decided to boycott talks with Shiites on the formation of a government, also denounced Wednesday's bomb attack on a major Shiite mosque in Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, and the subsequent reprisal attacks on Sunnis and Sunni mosques.

Al-Jaafari also said the leaders had agreed to spare no effort to protect mosques and fend off more violence.

The meeting came after U.S. President George W. Bush contacted Iraqi political leaders of all sects on Saturday, calling for unity and joint efforts to ease violence.

Earlier on Saturday, supporters of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and representatives of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a key Sunni body, declared in a joint statement an agreement to stop sectarian violence, vowing unity.

At least 160 Iraqis have been killed in rising sectarian violence during the past few days, pushing the already restive country into fears for a civil war.

The bloodshed continued on Saturday as bomb attacks and gunfire killed dozens of people.

Rising sectarian tensions have posed a grave threat to efforts toward the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Although the Shiites, the largest bloc in the parliament, have formally proposed al-Jaafari for premiership, leaders of the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds have still been jostling over the makeup of the next cabinet, over two months after the Dec. 15 elections.

Source: Xinhua