As the parties held internal tactical discussions a day after the release of election results giving the ruling Shi'ite Islamist Alliance a near-majority, insurgents struck in Baghdad, exploding a car bomb in a crowded market, killing one and wounding two others.

The capital was sealed off on Friday by security forces on alert for attacks by Sunni rebels, who accuse the Shi'ite Alliance of vote-rigging in last month's parliamentary election.

A motorcade carrying members of President Jalal Talabani's staff was attacked on a main road north of Baghdad on Friday night. Police said five people were wounded, including an adviser to the president, when a roadside bomb struck the convoy. Talabani himself was not present.

Political leaders of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni political bloc, held talks in Baghdad to discuss lodging an appeal against the poll results, which gave the Alliance 128 seats in the 275seat parliament.

But officials at the talks made clear the appeal was a mere formality and that Sunni parties would take part in talks to form a new government of national unity, which the United States hopes will undermine the Sunni insurgency and allow it to pull out its troops.

Also part of the tactical manoeuvring, Shi'ite politicians said they too would lodge appeals against some of the results.

Negotiations on Iraq's first full-term government since the US invasion are expected to begin in earnest in the next couple of days, but tough horse-trading means it may take weeks or even months for a government to be formed.

The Baghdad market blast and the gathering of Sunni parties showed that while many Sunnis have embraced the US-sponsored political process they first boycotted, some have still not abandoned the way of the gun.

Sunni Arabs, a minority that was dominant under Saddam Hussein's rule, are wary of the alliance of Shi'ite Islamist parties and fear being marginalised under a new Shi'ite-led government.

The two main Sunni blocs won 55 seats in the election, giving them a much stronger voice than in last year's interim assembly, which they boycotted. Other Sunni politicians have four seats in the Council of Representatives.

Washington is putting pressure on the majority Shi'ites and the Kurds, whose main bloc has 53 seats, to form a government that includes the Sunnis Meanwhile, there was no word on the fate of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) yesterday called on the 28year-old reporter's kidnappers to free her.