Iraqi policemen inspect the scene of a car bombing in Kirkuk Oct. 15, 2006.(Xinhua/AFP Photo) Photo Gallery >>>

    BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- A national reconciliation conference in Baghdad was indefinitely postponed Sunday following two days of sectarian revenge killings and insurgent bombings left at least 86 Iraqis dead.

    The Ministry of State for National Dialogue said the gathering, planned for Saturday, had been put off for "emergency reasons out of the control of the ministry."

    The postponement could deeply damage the al-Maliki administration, which took office just over four months ago promising to implement a 24-point National Reconciliation plan.

    Al-Maliki did not comment on the postponement, instead issuing a message to the Iraqi people Sunday praising them for approving the country's first post-Saddam Hussein constitution exactly one year ago. He acknowledged the document's adoption had intensified the insurgency.

    "It is your vote on the constitution that forced the terrorists ... to commit horrific massacres against innocent civilians and violate the sanctity of holy places, destroy infrastructure, obstruct reconstruction and services," he said.

    Weekend killings among Shiites and Sunnis left at least 63 people dead in Balad, a city north of Baghdad. Another 11 died Sunday in a series of apparently coordinated bombings of a girls school and other targets in the northern city of Kirkuk.

¡¡  A militant network that includes al-Qaida in Iraq announced in a video that it had established an Islamic state in six provinces, a propaganda push in its drive to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces and topple the American-backed Iraqi government.

    The Mujahedeen Shura Council ¡ª an umbrella organization of insurgent groups in Iraq ¡ª said the new state was made up of six provinces including Baghdad that have large Sunni populations, along with parts of two other central provinces that are predominantly Shiite.

    The speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Mahmud al-Meshhedani, derided the group's leaders as "vulgar with no religion, who only kill others under the pretext of jihad (holy war)."

    "Those who believe in this council are ignorant and those who follow it are foolish," al-Meshhedani said. "This council caused the sectarian conflict as well the displacement of both Shiites and Sunnis."

    The militants' announcement appeared symbolic because no Iraqi insurgent group has the strength or authority to act as a rival government and none controls territory.

    In Baghdad, Interior Ministry undersecretary Hala Shakir Salim survived a roadside bomb attack that killed seven others, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said. The Interior Ministry runs Iraqi police forces. Enditem

    (Agencies)

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