Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and former IRA leader, is to arrive in Baghdad this morning on a mission to help Iraq’s warring sects to seek reconciliation, drawing on the painful past of Northern Ireland.

Mr McGuinness is paying a two-day visit to Baghdad with Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC negotiator, and Lord Alderdice, the chairman of the Northern Irish decommissioning body. They will meet a group of Sunni and Shia leaders to thrash out ways to reduce violence and bridge the divide between communities.

The tentative peace process is being financed almost exclusively by an American businessman who has been so moved by the plight of Iraqis that he has spent much of his fortune on seeking a solution.

The talks in Baghdad are expected to be one of the most significant and come after two private meetings in Helsinki in the past year.

“People from divided societies are in the best position to help other people from divided societies,” said Padraig O’Malley, a reconciliation expert who has worked in Northern Ireland and South Africa for three decades.

Mr McGuinness’s career — from IRA commander to prisoner, to senior politician in the Northern Ireland power-sharing Government — is expected to serve as a model that could bring in all the disparate elements of the Iraqi conflict, even those who have had links to al-Qaeda.

“In the end the process has to be totally inclusive,” Mr O’Malley said. “There has to be room at the table for everyone, for those you hate, those you despise, those you would wish to kill . . . In the end you will find that indeed there are people who have been talking to elements of al-Qaeda.”

So far that has been unthinkable: former Sunni insurgents have formed anti-al-Qaeda units but they have yet to be incorporated by the Shia-dominated Government, which eyes them as terrorists.

The Iraqi conflict is a complex web of shifting allegiances pitting Sunnis against Shias, Arabs against Kurds and Americans against militias. The Shia majority is also riven by infighting as rival militias vie for control of the oil-rich south, and Baghdad is divided into dozens of separate neighbourhoods by concrete blast walls and checkpoints. “In Northern Ireland, ten years after \ . . . the two communities are more divided, residentially, than ever before,” Mr O’Malley said. “People have decided that reconciliation to them is living apart, peacefully.”

Mac Maharaj, a veteran South African activist who was once imprisoned with Nelson Mandela, hoped that the meetings would allow both sides to find common ground. “It has really provided the Iraqis with a platform to speak to each other without factoring in outside interests,” he said.

So far, that has produced a framework of 17 principles on which all parties agree, ranging from a renunciation of terrorism and factionalism in government to respect for an independent judiciary. No agreement has been reached on disbanding militias, although the parties did promise to “resolve disputes and ban the use of arms by armed groups during negotiations”.

The success of the meetings has been in part ascribed to Robert Bendetson, a Massachusetts furniture retailer, who produced about $500,000 (£250,000) of his money to pay for the travels of the Iraqi delegates and the international team. “It was just the right thing to do, seeing people’s lives and families ruined,” said Mr Bendetson, visibly moved on his first visit to Baghdad yesterday.

Salih Mutlak, a secular Sunni and former Baathist who is attending the reconciliation meeting, said that any progress would have to be made in spite of the Shia-led, religiously conservative Government. “Iraqis are ready for reconciliation but those in power are not ready. Those bent on revenge will never have reconciliation,” he said.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?