Iraq Sunnis set terms for cooperation

BAGHDAD - Leaders of Iraq's Sunni Arabs have set terms for their involvement in drafting a constitution, indicating they wanted about a third of the seats on the body that is supposed to propose a new text by August.

There was no immediate response from the Shi'ite-led government that took power in an election that the once dominant Sunni minority largely boycotted. Officials have said they could expand the parliamentary committee to bring in more Sunnis.

A congress of leading Sunni organisations resolved to end discussions on the constitution if they were not given a bigger representation on the negotiating body. Without their input, it may prove hard to avoid an effective Sunni veto at a referendum.

Sunni guerrillas, on the other hand, oppose cooperation with the new administration or the US occupying forces and issued new death threats against Sunni leaders engaged in discussions.

Among attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, rebels ambushed the motorcade of a Kurdish parliamentarian on the constitutional committee, killing two of his bodyguards in Baghdad. And police said 22 soldiers from Shi'ite southern Iraq were kidnapped in the rebel Sunni heartlands of the western desert.

With civil war a possibility if major groups cannot overcome their differences, Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders, including Iraq's new president, defended the ethnic and sectarian militias they once fielded against Saddam Hussein.

They said they should play a major role in fighting the insurgency among his fellow Sunnis.

The US occupying authority and previous Iraqi leaders it appointed had only limited success in persuading armed groups like the Shi'ite Badr Brigades and Kurdish "peshmerga" to disarm and disband or merge into newly formed government forces.

An alliance grouping most of the main Sunni Arab groups, representing the 20-per cent minority that dominated Iraq for much of the past century, resolved at a conference to seek 25 seats on the parliamentary committee drafting a constitution.

Because most Sunnis took no part in the January election, few sit in parliament and so only two are on the committee.

Shi'ites, who now dominate parliament along with the Kurdish minority, say they are keen to draw Sunnis into the process and some officials have said they could expand the number of seats on the committee. Adding 20-odd Sunni members could take the total size of the body to about 75 or 80.

"The number of our representatives must be 25 so that we have fair rights," the Gathering of the Sunni People said in a resolution approved by delegates to the conference in Baghdad.

"If the National Assembly ... stick to their position we suggest suspending our participation."

In the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, however, a group calling itself the General Command for Military Forces in Iraq circulated leaflets threatening prominent Sunni leaders from the Muslim Clerics Association and Iraqi Islamic Party if they agreed to take part in writing the new constitution.

Sunni Arabs have a potential veto under a rule written in to the UN-sponsored interim constitution that stipulates at least 16 of 18 provinces must support the new text in a referendum.

Iraqi officials have said the constitution will be ready by an Aug. 15 deadline. Under a political timetable drafted under US occupation, once written it must be approved by referendum before an election at the end of the year.

The extent to which all communities in Iraq are armed is cause for concern to those anxious to avert outright civil war.

The government has a growing army and police force. But non-government forces, not just among Sunni rebels, are potent forces and some troops and policemen may have mixed loyalties.

Addressing a meeting of the Shi'ite Badr movement, which fought Saddam's forces from bases in Iran, President Jalal Talebani said the Badr fighters and the Kurdish peshmerga his party controls still had a role to play in fighting the rebels.

"Your people are still looking to you ... to defend them," said Talabani, appointed after the January election.

A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb near Ad Dawr and three motorists were killed by a car bomb at a petrol station. The handcuffed bodies of two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were found shot south of the capital, police said.

Saboteurs again attacked an oil export pipeline in the north. And an international body said gunmen had robbed the crew of a foreign tanker off the southern oil centre of Basra.

- REUTERS