Baghdad - In the final days of Iraq's provincial elections campaign, women's rights advocates across the country are pressing the government to make last-minute amendments on the current provisional elections law to guarantee women a greater share of seats on the councils than in previous polls.

They are working to guarantee that women will break the previous ceiling of 25 per cent of seats.

Baghdad  - Throughout Iraq's provincial election campaign, the campaign posters of secular candidates can be seen across the country side by side with those of the well-financed religious powers.

This cohabitation is a new phenomenon, and highlights the subtle but increasingly important struggle between the more established religious parties and newer secular forces.

Religious groups are participating in these elections with greater financial resources and regional support, with much of it believed to be coming from Iran.

On the other side, secular parties are banking on popular disenchantment with the performance of the clerical coalitions, who dominated the last provincial vote in 2005.

Baghdad, Jan. 22 : The Iraqi government is struggling to sell a 21 million pound yacht designed for former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Saddam never actually got to sail the yacht that was built for him in 1981.

According to a Sky News report, the 82-metre Ocean Breeze is fitted with swimming pools, a mosque and a missile launcher, but there have been no takers and it is being returned to Iraq.

The vessel will be towed home from Greece, where it has been moored since last July, to save further berthing and maintenance fees.

Baghdad  - A luxury yacht that belonged to Saddam Hussein failed to tempt a buyer from Europe owing to the credit crunch, an Iraqi government spokesman said on Wednesday.

"The Ocean Breeze yacht will return to the southern port of Basra from the Greek port of Piraeus," Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

Al-Dabbagh added that the global crisis had discouraged buyers and sharply reduced the price which the Iraqi government considered the vessel's true value.

Baghdad - Iraqi police on Tuesday killed a would-be suicide bomber, while six people were injured in separate explosions in Baghdad, Mosul and Baquba.

Police forces gunned down a suicide bomber before he could detonate himself near a security patrol in al-Yarmook neighbourhood in the southern section of Mosul city, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

A policeman was wounded as a result of the blast that occurred when the explosives strapped to the bomber's body went off, the source added.

Mosul, the capital city of Nineveh province, lies some 400 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad.

Baghdad  - Two civilians were killed and eight others wounded in separate bomb attacks in central and northern Iraq on Monday, local media cited police sources as saying.

Two people were killed in a bomb attack in the al-Eishaqi region south of the town of Tikrit, located 175 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad, the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported.

In Baghdad, four civilians were injured by a bomb that was stuck to a civilian vehicle and was detonated in the Saeeda area in the city's south-east, a police source told VOI.