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Iraq is in danger of sliding into civil war and its government and the international community must do more to pull it back from the brink, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said.

“The everyday life of Iraqi people is dominated by the constant threat of sectarian violence and civil strife,'' Annan said yesterday, addressing a meeting at UN headquarters in New York attended by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Iraq's government must make stronger efforts to “defuse rising sectarian tensions'' in the country, Annan said.

Neighboring countries must be ``responsive to Iraqi security needs'' and tighten border controls, he added.

Islamic extremists, some slipping over the border from countries such as Iran and Syria, and fighters loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein are attacking the US-led coalition and Iraqi security forces in an effort to make the country ungovernable. A wave of sectarian violence between the country's Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities has also swept Iraq since the bombing and partial destruction of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra in February.

“Iraq and its leaders are now at an important crossroads.

If they can address the needs and common interests of all Iraqis, the promise of peace and prosperity is still within reach,'' said Annan, according to a transcript of his speech published on the UN's Web site.

“But if the current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of a full-scale civil war,'' he added.

Iraq saw a wave of bombings and killings yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported. A suicide bomber killed 21 people and wounded 17 others in Tall Afar, in northern Iraq, AFP said, citing unidentified local police officers. The bomber detonated an explosive belt in front of a crowd waiting for butane-gas ration cards, the news agency said.

Thirteen volunteers were killed in a bomb attack at a police recruitment center in the western city of Ramadi, AFP said.

Ramadi, capital of the Sunni Muslim dominated al-Anbar province, has been a major battlefield for US forces since the March 2003 invasion that ousted Hussein.

Four members of a Shiite family were shot dead by gunmen as they attempted to flee their homes north of Baghdad, AFP said. In the main southern city of Basra, Lieutenant Colonel Fawzi Abdel Karim, the director of the province's counter-terrorism office, was kidnapped and killed by gunmen who then dumped his body north of the city, the report added.

US President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet with Talabani this week when he is in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting to discuss efforts to halt the violence engulfing Iraq.

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