DJIBOUTI (AFP) Somalia's opposition coalition on Saturday endorsed a truce with the government as part of efforts to end the Horn of Africa nation's 17 years of bloodshed, a spokesman said. Suleiman Olad Roble, spokesman for the Eritrea-based Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), told AFP that a 106-strong majority of the 191 ARS central committee members "fully endorse the agreement." "It is a great victory for the leadership of the alliance and for those who signed the agreement," he added. "The alliance is ready to fully implement its part of the deal and call on the other parties to do so."

The chief of the ARS, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein signed agreements at United Nations-sponsored talks in Djibouti on June 9 that included a three-month truce.

Ahmed told AFP earlier on Saturday that the alliance wanted the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces in the country and a deployment of UN forces.

Ethiopian forces came to the rescue of an embattled Somali government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that controlled much of southern and central Somalia.

BAGHDAD (Agencies) The Iraqi parliament on Saturday voted for the return of six Sunni ministers to the cabinet of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, giving a fresh boost to the country's national reconciliation program."Today, parliament voted to accept our candidates ... This means the Accordance Front has officially returned to the government," the bloc's spokesman, Salim al-Jubouri, told Reuters after the vote. "It is a real step forward for political reform."Getting the Front to return after it quit the cabinet a year ago in a row over power sharing has been seen as key to healing divisions between Shiites and Sunnis.Sunnis have little voice in the current cabinet, which is dominated by Shiites and ethnic Kurds.

Parliament questioned candidates for 10 vacant cabinet jobs, including five ministries and a deputy prime ministerial post that had previously been allocated to the Accordance Front.

The other portfolios were left largely vacant when separate Shiite and secular factions quit al-Maliki's government last year. They will be filled by politicians from other parties.

Maliki had earlier approved the names for all the posts, which are not for any key security positions. The Front pulled out of Maliki's cabinet in August last year, demanding a greater say in security policies as well as the release of mainly Sunni Arab detainees. Most of its cabinet seats were never filled.

An amnesty law passed in February has begun the process of releasing many prisoners from the Sunni Arab community. Sunni Arabs form the bulk of inmates after security forces detained thousands in sweeps at the height of a Sunni Arab insurgency.

The Front has been on the verge of rejoining the government several times in the past, only for obstacles to suddenly emerge.

Arab League slammed the ICC's "unbalanced" prosecutor and called for Sudan's courts to judge the case  CAIRO (Agencies)  The Arab League criticized the International Criminal Court's prosecutor Saturday for seeking the arrest of Sudan's president on genocide charges, saying diplomacy should be given a priority to solve the conflict in Darfur.Arab foreign ministers, holding an emergency meeting in Cairo, said Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa would head to Khartoum on Sunday to inform the Sudanese leadership of a plan to defuse the crisis. Moussa said he would announce the details within two days.The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has asked the court for a warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on suspicion of masterminding crimes against humanity in his country's troubled Darfur region.

Moreno-Ocampo accused Bashir of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a "slow death" and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes in Darfur.

A dangerous precedent

The final communiqué of the meeting said the ministers "called for giving the priority for political settlement ... and called for an international high-profile summit to push the political process in Darfur." Earlier in the day, Algeria urged other Arab nations to press the United Nations Security Council to prevent the ICC from issuing the arrest warrant for Bashir.

"What the prosecutor of the court has done is a dangerous precedent," Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told his Arab counterparts.

"We have (to take) ... a strong stance in solidarity with our brothers in Sudan and move effectively with regional and international organizations and the ... states in the Security Council to immediately reconsider this demand by the prosecutor," he said, according to extracts of his speech.

Sudan has asked China and Russia, as well as the Arab League and the African Union, to help it pursue a U.N. Security Council resolution suspending a warrant for Bashir for 12 months.

Diplomats in New York say the Arab League and the AU's Peace and Security Council are expected to call on the Security Council to block any ICC moves in the interests of bringing peace to Darfur, devastated by the 5-year-old conflict.

Arab countries usually resent allegations of human rights violations in the region.

Analysts say Arab leaders are also concerned that failing to thwart the ICC move against Bashir may encourage more foreign intervention in their affairs.

Many Arabs and Muslims accuse Western powers of launching a war on their faith in the name of human rights while ignoring what they see as war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians and by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Khatoum's rejection

Khartoum has consistently rejected the ICC's jurisdiction, saying it would try alleged war criminals in its own courts, although credible trials have so far failed to materialize.

Sudan has refused to surrender two suspects named last year in connection with war crimes in Darfur and hopes to persuade veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to defer any ICC prosecution of Beshir.

League chief Moussa and other Arab leaders have suggested that the ICC could not prosecute Beshir because he has immunity as a head of state, but Article 27 of the Rome Treaty specifically excludes that possibility.

The ICC "shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as a head of state... shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility," it says.

The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum and state-backed militias.