BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani rejected Sunday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's idea of an international peace conference on Iraq, apparently leaving the idea dead in the water.

"There's a political process ongoing in Iraq and there's a parliament which is the best in the region. We've become an independent sovereign state and it will be us who decides the future of our country," he said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Annan suggested that the international community should hold a broad-based peace conference in a bid to find a way out of the vicious sectarian struggle that has plunged Iraq into bloodshed.

"I do not believe, given the bitterness and the level of violence, that they can do it alone. The international community has to help them do it and work with them," he told reporters at the United Nations in New York.

The secretary general's idea has not found much support, however, and on Saturday it was rejected by one of the most powerful Shiite leaders in Iraq, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim.

No serious Iraq conference could ignore Hakim's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a powerful Shiite movement with a major role in the Shiite-dominated government. The senior cleric told reporters in Amman: "We think it is neither reasonable nor correct to discuss questions relative to Iraq in the framework of international conferences."