At the opening of peace talks, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged former soldiers from the ousted dictator's defeated army to join Iraq's new security forces in fighting the armed factions, which are tearing the country apart.

He also urged delegates -- including for the first time representatives of some of Iraq's illegal armed groups -- to review the law, which banned tens of thousands of Saddam's Baath Party activists from working in the civil service.

"The Iraqi army opens its doors to officers and soldiers from the former army who wish to serve the country," Maliki told hundreds of delegates who braved the chaos on Baghdad's streets to attend the peace conference.

"The national unity government will pay pensions for those who are not reintegrated," added the premier, who has presented the broad-based talks as a fresh opportunity to end Iraq's vicious sectarian bloodletting.

Before the conference began, delegates said that, for the first time, the talks would include former members of Saddam's Baath party and representatives of some of the armed groups fighting the US forces in Iraq.

"We draw a distinction between Baathists whose hands are not stained with blood and those who committed the most heinous crimes against Iraqis and still continue to kill innocent people," Maliki said.

"We draw a distinction between the two, so as not to harm the first group and so that the second does not escape justice," he declared.

"I call upon parliament to review the constitutional items regarding such committees as de-Baathification and the anti-corruption committee to embody the principle of forgiveness," Maliki said.

After the US-led invasion of March 2003, which toppled Saddam's Sunni-led regime, the occupying force dissolved the Iraqi army and oversaw the sacking of tens of thousands of Baathists from government jobs.

The creation of a huge pool of embittered and armed Sunnis fuelled the subsequent rebellion against the new Shia-led government, and filled the ranks of the nationalist and Islamist insurgent groups fighting US forces.

Since February, when Sunni extremists demolished a revered Shia shrine in the northern city of Samarra, Iraq has been engulfed in a vicious sectarian war between Sunni and Shia factions that claims more than 100 lives per day.

Maliki and his US allies hope the national reconciliation conference will encourage some hardline elements to join the political process and isolate those determined to continue campaigns of bombing and mass murder.

Naseer al-Ani, spokesman of the conference, admitted not many Baathists had turned up and that some other invitees had also stayed away, a disappointment which he attributed to the dangerous security situation.

"If they boycotted this time, the next time they will see some changes and they will come," he predicted. "We have to talk to those who boycotted and the 1,000-mile road starts with the first mile."