1.

RICE, IN BAGHDAD, URGES SUNNI ROLE IN CONSTITUTION
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.

** U.S. Message for Shiites -- Administration Fears Iraq May Miss a Chance to Dampen Insurgency **

New York Times
May 16, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/international/middleeast/16rice.html

[PHOTO CAPTION: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday in Baghdad.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, outfitted in a helmet and flak jacket, just after her arrival Sunday in Salahuddin in northern Iraq.]

BAGHDAD -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Iraq on Sunday to urge its new Shiite-dominated government to greatly increase the involvement of Sunni Arabs in writing the Iraqi constitution, amid growing administration alarm that a chance to draw the Sunni minority into Iraq's new democracy is slipping away.

On a trip that underscored Washington's urgency, Ms. Rice carried a clear message: Shiite political leaders should respond rapidly and effectively to any sign that wavering elements of the Sunni Arab insurgency might be ready to turn to peace.

Ms. Rice, in an interview, said she had told the leaders here that their efforts to punish Sunni Arabs linked to the old government must "respect the fact that there now needs to be an inclusive Iraqi process and an inclusive Iraqi government."

She also warned Syria, accusing it of "standing in the way of the Iraqi people's desire for peace."

"There are very deep concerns about Iraq's neighbors," she said, "and I heard particular concerns about Syria, about the gathering of terrorist networks there and the transiting of those networks across the Syrian border."

The warning followed a week of fighting by a 1,000-strong Marine battle group along the Syrian border. Commanders said that they had killed at least 125 insurgents but that groups of insurgents had also fled to safety in Syria. "Syria is badly out of step in the region," she said.

The anxious atmosphere surrounding Ms. Rice's journey was compounded by a further wave of the violence that has shaken the new government. Iraqi officials announced the discovery of 46 bodies at sites in and near Baghdad, three suicide bombings and three shootings, including one that killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most revered Shiite cleric.

The secretary of state's journey -- on a C-17 military transport aircraft, with shorter hops in Iraq aboard helicopter gunships -- included a stop in northern Iraq to talk to Massoud Barzani, the powerful Kurdish leader. Kurds are the Shiites' principal partners in the new government.

From there, she flew to Baghdad, for meetings in the heavily fortified Green Zone complex that included Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, American military leaders and Jaafari aides, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi and Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi.

In an interview after the talks, Ms. Rice said she had specifically cautioned the Iraqis that de-Baathification -- the process Shiite hard-liners favor of purging the government and the new armed forces of all who served at senior levels under Saddam Hussein -- should not be so severe as to impede the creation of an "inclusive" government.

She said she also made clear that the Bush administration was deeply concerned that the parliamentary committee drafting the new Iraqi constitution had only 2 Sunni Arabs among its 55 members.

American officials, she told the Iraqi leaders, have "concerns about the committee that was appointed and the Sunni representation on that committee."

With the 12-hour visit, Ms. Rice became the highest-ranking American official to visit Iraq since the January elections. The vote, which drew millions of Iraqis to the polls, was seen as a major boost to the American plan to build a Western-style democracy here.

But that political momentum was largely lost in the three months of negotiating and maneuvering it took for the new government to emerge, and a brief lull in violence has given way to one of the war's bloodiest passages, with at least 70 car bombings and nearly 500 people killed over the past two weeks.

In the days before Ms. Rice set out on her 14,000-mile round trip, senior Bush administration officials had signaled a growing sense of disquiet that Dr. Jaafari and other senior Shiite leaders might be backing away from pledges to make the new government into an instrument for bridging the country's deep schisms.

But the Sunni Arabs with links to the Baathist past are the exact people who could help reach out to insurgent leaders, including Sunni tribal chiefs, who, American officials say, have sent preliminary signals that they may be ready to negotiate.

"The insurgents in Iraq are very violent, but you defeat them not just through military effort," Ms. Rice told reporters traveling with her on Sunday. "You defeat them by having a political alternative that is strong." Now, she added, Iraqi leaders are "going to have to intensify their efforts to demonstrate that in fact the political process is the answer for the Iraqi people."

While American officials have voiced apprehensions in recent days, Ms. Rice's comments were the most explicit and forceful public remarks.

Ms. Rice's strategy appeared to be to try to win the Kurdish leaders' backing for a more conciliatory attitude toward Sunni Arabs.

The Jaafari government's relations with Sunni Arab leaders were jarred even before it took office, with the Shiite leaders vetoing a wide array of Sunni nominees to the new cabinet before agreeing to seven slots in the 35-member ministry for Sunni officials who have been disparaged within their own community as Shiite pawns.

Ms. Rice praised Dr. Jaafari for "a very good job of including Sunnis" in the cabinet, including Mr. Dulaimi.

The cabinet led by Dr. Jaafari is dominated by Shiite Arabs in a coalition with Kurds, who are mainly Sunni. Sunni Arabs have a much smaller role. That is roughly representative of Iraq's ethnic and religious makeup, but a senior State Department official said Sunday that Ms. Rice felt the constitutional committee, with only two Sunni Arabs, was "more restrictive" and would create problems. "There are several stages to the constitution-writing process, and one of her messages was that these stages can be more inclusive," the official said.

American officials have encouraged the Iraqis to create subcommittees that would take over much of the duties of drafting the constitution and place Sunnis on those panels. On Sunday, a top Shiite parliamentary aide, Ali al-Dabagh, said lawmakers were moving in that direction.

"We are trying to include those who do not have enough representation, including Arab Sunnis, in such a way that they do not feel that they are only consultants to the process," Mr. Dabagh said.

American and some Iraqi officials are worried that a constitution that does not take Sunni concerns into account could fail. That would happen if two-thirds of the voters in 3 or more of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it during the referendum scheduled for October. Sunnis dominate in 3 provinces.

Many Shiite leaders, particularly those of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Islamist party, strongly favor exhaustive de-Baathification. In the early stages of the occupation, American officials in Baghdad also favored wide purges of Baathists.

Dr. Jaafari and other Shiite political leaders are trying to balance the urgings of American officials with the demands for justice by their constituents, who were widely persecuted under Mr. Hussein and the Sunni Baathists.

A senior aide to Dr. Jaafari, Laith Kubba, said Sunday that de-Baathification early in the American-led occupation "unfairly treated large numbers of people who should have stayed in their jobs."

But Mr. Kubba also outlined a number of planned steps to assure Iraqis that they will not be victimized as they were under Mr. Hussein. They included the reinstatement of the death penalty; the imposition of harsh criminal and financial penalties against anyone giving "refuge" to or sponsoring a terrorist or insurgent; and a crackdown on bribery of border guards who have allowed foreign fighters to infiltrate Iraq.

"The will is there to take a much firmer hand," Mr. Kubba said.

--Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and John F. Burns and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedy from Baghdad.

2.

What the Secretary Has Been Saying

INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD ENGLE OF NBC

U.S. Department of State
Baghdad, Iraq
May 16, 2005

QUESTION: Secretary Rice, the Iraqi people we spoke to are not satisfied with the progress, particularly since the swearing in of this new government. Is the United States and are you satisfied with the progress they've been making?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I've been very impressed with the spirit of the Iraqi people, first of all, and it's partly -- part of the democratic process for people to be impatient with it. That's not a bad thing. But if you think about it, this government has been in power a very, very short time. In fact, it's been less than a year since they actually transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi people. And so there are going to be ups and downs. Things are not going to happen overnight. But if you look at what they've achieved thus far, it's really quite remarkable. And they've got hard work ahead of them but we are prepared to try and help.

QUESTION: But the people on the ground see the situation apparently getting worse since this new government arrived.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there is no doubt that the terrorists who see a new government now and see, by the way, with every stage of this political process, I think they see their chances to take Iraq off the political path beginning to diminish. And so we should not be surprised that they have been very aggressive since the new government came into power to try and demonstrate that the new government is not going to make a difference. We just have to be persistent. We and the Iraqis have to be persistent. We have to be persistent on the security side in doing the kinds of operations that we've been doing around the country to round up terrorists. We have to be persistent in pressing Iraq's neighbors not to allow terrorists to use their territory for transit. We have to be persistent in trying to help the Iraqis deliver services better than they have been able to do. And the Iraqis have to be persistent in a political process that maintains momentum, that is indeed inclusive, because if it's an inclusive process and all Iraqis begin to see their future in this process, then the terrorists will have very little ground to stand on.

QUESTION: And finally, when you talk about inclusiveness, Iraqis from the Sunni triangle do not feel represented at all by this government. They think it is an Iran-backed, Shiite-dominated government. We hear from the officials in Jafaari's government that they area reaching out to the Sunnis. What evidence do you have? Do you believe them?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I do believe that this government is reaching out to Sunnis and has reached out. In fact, if you look at the government itself, it has significant Sunni representation, not just in numbers but in several very important posts, for instance, the Defense Minister is a Sunni Arab. And the question really now is about the constitutional process and we have talked today with the Iraqi leadership about the need to make sure that that process is inclusive. Obviously, the Sunnis, for a variety of reasons, did not fully participate in the elections and some of that had to do with the intimidation of terrorists. Perhaps there were also choices made.

But that is now behind the Iraqi people and the future ahead of them is the constitution. And we have talked, and I think found receptive people to the notion that the constitution has to be an inclusive document. In fact, the Iraqis are saying that they are looking for mechanisms that will help deal with the issues of including Sunnis.

QUESTION: Secretary Rice, thank you very much for your time.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, very much.

3.

International

INSURGENTS LEAVE 15 DEAD IN A SERIES OF ATTACKS IN IRAQ
By Terence Neilan and Sabrina Tavernise

New York Times
May 16, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/international/middleeast/16cnd-iraq.html

BAGHDAD -- Sunni-led insurgents renewed their bloody attacks across Baghdad and outside the capital today, leaving at least 15 people dead and a number wounded, including three children.

A roadside bomb in a southwest district of Baghdad aimed at Iraqi soldiers in a passing convoy killed two civilians and wounded four, a police official said. Another Iraqi Army unit was attacked by a roadside bomb in Khan Bani Saad, about six miles northeast of the capital, killing four soldiers, the police said.

In central Baghdad, a mortar fell on the College of Engineering, killing two students and wounding 12 others, an Interior Ministry police official said.

Armed men also opened fire on an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing two civilians and wounding three people, one of them a guardsman and the others civilians, the official said.

An officer in the Ministry of Defense was attacked "by a large terrorist group" in southern Baghdad this morning, the ministry said in a statement, but apparently escaped injury. Escort guards opened fire, killing four of the attackers and capturing a large amount of weapons and ammunition, the statement said.

South of Baghdad, in the town of Al Muwelha, armed men attacked a primary school as students were taking an examination. Two teachers were killed and many were wounded, a Babylon provincial police official said. It is believed that the same group opened fire on local shops, leaving at least one man dead, the official said.

In Sadat al Hindiya, also south of the capital, a police officer and his wife were killed by an unidentified armed group and their three children were badly wounded, the Babylon police official said.

The bodies of three beheaded men were found today at Jurf al Shaker, south of Baghdad, according to the Babylon provincial police.

This follows the discovery on Sunday of the bodies of 46 people who had been killed. In addition, two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a town courthouse just north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing five other people and narrowly missing a regional governor.

In a series of grisly discoveries on Sunday that are becoming increasingly common here, the Interior Ministry said, the authorities found the corpses, some of soldiers and some apparently of civilians, in Baghdad and three other cities. Some were found in a garbage dump and some at a poultry farm, among other locations. The authorities did not identify the dead or provide details about who might be behind the killings.

The day was also punctuated by three assassinations, including one of a Shiite cleric.

The killings came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Iraq, and one day after the American military said it had completed a major offensive against insurgents in the desert in western Iraq near the border with Syria.

The newly formed Iraqi government on Sunday made its first substantive public remarks about the recent surge in violence, which has killed more than 400 Iraqis since late April. Laith Kubba, the spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said that the government would crack down on the insurgents and that proposals to carry out that mission were forthcoming.

"Iraq has suffered from the spread of criminal networks throughout the country," Mr. Kubba said. "These criminals are trying to demonstrate and prove that the government is incapable of protecting the people."

"These groups are professional groups," he said. "They do not hesitate to kill hundreds of Iraqis with no remorse."

Among the bodies found Sunday were 13 that had been partly buried in a garbage dump near a Shiite slum here. Their hands were bound, and some appeared to have been blindfolded, a witness said. They appeared to have been killed recently, officials said.

Later in the day, the Defense Ministry said 10 Iraqi soldiers had been found with their throats cut, near Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad.

Eleven bodies of men thought to be poultry workers who had been shot dead were found south of Baghdad near the town of Iskandariya, in an area prone to insurgent attack.

On Sunday night, an Interior Ministry official reported yet another discovery: In Shaab, a town north of Baghdad, the police found 12 bodies in two areas. The victims were wearing only underwear, with their hands tied behind their backs, and they had been shot in the head execution style, the official said.

In an organized series of shootings, a senior Industry Ministry official and his driver were shot dead while driving to work in the southwestern part of Baghdad. A few hours later, one of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's aides in Baghdad, Sheik Qasim al-Ghirawi, and his son were shot dead, also while riding in a car. In a third shooting, an official in the Education Ministry and his son were killed south of Baghdad.

The double suicide attack took place in Baquba, a town just north of Baghdad that is an insurgent stronghold. A car bomber blew himself up near a courthouse, narrowly missing the governor of Diyala Province. In an increasingly common tactic, another bomber attacked soon after at a nearby spot, killing 5 other people and wounding 24, an Interior Ministry official said.

Three men whom the Iraqi authorities have described as Palestinians and one Iraqi were shown confessing on an Iraqi television program Saturday night to having engineered a suicide bombing attack in a busy Baghdad market on Thursday.

The group appeared on a daily program that features interviews with men captured in security raids, called "Terror in the Hands of Justice." Maj. Gen. Muhammad Hussein, the Iraqi Army commando unit leader who said he had taken them into custody, said in an interview that those described as Palestinians were seized after a Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, captured the Iraqi.

The men were in their 30's and 40's, he said, and were captured in their apartments and in a car repair shop, where one of them is accused of having prepared the explosive-laden car. General Hussein said that the men had fake Syrian and Iraqi passports and that they had been identified as Palestinians by their speech and the Baghdad area where they lived.

But on Sunday, a Sunni religious group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said the men were innocent and "had never borne arms," Agence France-Press [sic -- the proper spelling is 'Agence France-Presse.' --H.A.] reported.

Sunni Arabs, embittered over what they say has been unfair treatment by the Shiite-led government, often express resentment of policing by Iraq's new predominantly Shiite force. General Hussein, a Shiite, contended in the interview that religion was not a factor in making security arrests.

A militant Islamic group, Ansar al-Sunna, on Sunday released a video on a Web site that appeared to show insurgents attacking a convoy and shooting four people dead. It was not clear who the victims were in the violent scene, in which the gunmen continued to shoot bodies of men who appeared to be already dead.

Another Web site that tracks videos issued by insurgents suggested that there might be a connection with the kidnapping last week of a Japanese man, Akihiko Saito, near an American base west of Baghdad.

The governor of the western province of Anbar, Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi, who had been kidnapped early last week as the American military carried out an offensive in western Iraq, was freed Sunday, the Associated Press reported. The report said that the kidnappers had told his family that they were holding him until American forces ceased their military action in the area.

The American military said it had detained 21 suspected insurgents in and around the northern city of Mosul on Sunday.

--Terence Neilan reported from New York for this article and Sabrina Tavernise from Baghdad. Richard A. Oppel Jr., Warzer Jaff and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad.