Baghdad  - The government of Iraq responded angrily Thursday to calls by the leader of an al-Qaeda-linked organization to have the country's top Sunni officials killed, local media said.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq militia, had said Wednesday that Iraq's top Sunni officials, including Vice- President Tareq al-Hashimi, should be killed because they were working "against Islam and in support of the American occupation."

Baghdad - A major Iraqi political party has called on the Iraqi government to integrate the so-called Awakening Councils into the country's regular security forces, it emerged on Thursday.

A spokesman for the Iraqi National Accord Front, a mainly Sunni Islamist coalition, said that the Awakening Councils, which were instrumental in bringing the Sunni resistance into the pro-US fold and in beating back al-Qaeda, should be brought into the political mainstream.

Tokyo - Japan is to withdraw its Air Self-Defence Forces from Iraq by the end of the year, the Defence Ministry said Thursday.

The nation's air force has been assisting the US-led coalition in airlifting materials and troops between Kuwait and Iraq since 2006.

The scheduled pullout of the remaining personnel would complete the withdrawal of Japan's Self-Defence Forces from Iraq. It sent in ground troops in 2004 in its first military deployment in another country since World War II. The soldiers, who helped with Iraq's reconstruction, were withdrawn in 2006.

Tokyo's decision was expected to irritate the United States, Japan's most important ally, which urged Japan to continue its mission.

Baghdad - Three civilians were killed and 12 people wounded in an explosion late Wednesday in the Shiite-dominated city of Karbala, 110 km southwest of Baghdad, sources said.

Medical sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that two children and a woman were dead. Meanwhile, a police source told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency that the explosion took place only 1,000 metres from the mausoleum of Imam al-Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammad.

Washington - US President George W Bush met Wednesday with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as the two countries work to finalize an agreement establishing a legal basis for the presence of US forces.

Bush has sought the deal as to replace the UN mandate set to expire at the end of the year, but the two sides have been bogged down in disagreement over withdrawal timelines and Washington's demand that US troops retain immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution.

Baghdad- Iraq's politicians have not reacted significantly to US President George W. Bush's announcement on Tuesday that he would withdraw 8,000 combat troops from the country by February next year.

One of the few to make a statement on the development, parliamentarian Osama al-Najafi, said drily on Wednesday that "We know that this is merely election propaganda for the (US) Republican Party."

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen killed an Iraqi Christian civilian in western Mosul on Wednesday, according to the Voices of Iraq news agency (VOI).