Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:03 PM BST

By Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged hundreds of tribal leaders gathered in Baghdad on Saturday to unite to end the bitter sectarian bloodshed between Sunnis and Shi'ites that has raised fears of civil war.

"Iraq needs all of its sons during this stage. There is no difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites," he told the meeting, the first in a series to promote dialogue between the warring sects as part of his national reconciliation programme.

Washington says a major security crackdown by Iraqi and American troops in Baghdad, where the communal bloodshed is worst, is not a durable solution to Iraq's instability and must be accompanied by movement on the political front.

"Yes, we differ in opinion and that's a healthy sign but we must hold dialogue to solve our problems," Maliki said.

"The liberation of the nation from any foreign hand cannot be without national unity, the unity that our forefathers built during hundreds of years."

Shi'ite Muslims, the majority sect in Iraq, were oppressed under Saddam Hussein but now lead the government of national unity. Minority Sunnis were politically dominant under Saddam and form the backbone of the three-year-old insurgency.

The government hopes tribal leaders can exercise influence over their tribes, but it is unclear how effective they can be among Iraqis increasingly turning to religious leaders for guidance.

Iraq's minister for national dialogue, Akram al-Hakim, told state television that other meetings would be held to bring together clerics, army officers and civil and political groups.

One Sunni tribal leader set out a list of demands, including a five-year delay in implementing federalism under the constitution, the disbandment of a committee that has purged thousands of mostly Sunni members of the former ruling party from state institutions, and the disarming of militias.

Sunnis, who mostly live in Iraq's central provinces, fear federalism will deny them access to southern and northern Iraq's oil-rich regions. They also accuse militias tied to the government of fuelling much of the sectarian conflict.

In fresh violence, gunmen in the religiously mixed town of Baquba attacked a Shi'ite family, killing two women and two young children and wounding 11 others. Police said they had been moving out of their house after receiving death threats.

In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, gunmen killed three Shi'ites working in a bakery.

But the violence has not been restricted to Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs. Four Kurdish civilians were killed by gunmen near ethnically mixed Kirkuk, a city rich in oil at the centre of a complex dispute over its ethnic identity.

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