Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Iraq Official Killed; Cleric, Sunnis Meet

Looks like an attempt to put aside differences for the greater good.

There are those that believe we are creating the chaos.

The subject of civil war is broached, and Mohammed, a Shia driver from
Sadr City blurts out, “The occupiers are creating these problems between
the Shia and Sunni, but they will not divide us! All occupations only
mean destruction and suffering!”
#msg-6351428

Have you finished messing around with your signature yet, can you come out and play?

Have they got at least a slim shot at unity???

-Am

Iraq Official Killed; Cleric, Sunnis Meet

Updated 11:47 AM ET May 22, 2005


By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Aides of a radical Shiite cleric met on Sunday with a key Sunni group seeking to ease sectarian tensions in Iraq, while gunmen killed a top trade ministry official as a spree of violence that followed the announcement of a new government entered its fourth week.

Iraqi authorities also released Ghazi Hammud al-Obeidi, one of the most-wanted officials from Saddam Hussein's former regime, because he is apparently terminally ill, Justice Minister Abdel Hussein Shandal and the suspect's lawyer said Sunday.

Also Sunday, three Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American guide who had been held hostage for nearly two months in Iraq were released.

Senior aides of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr met a key Sunni group in a bid to soothe tensions that have flared amid violence that has killed at least 550 people, including 10 Shiite and Sunni clerics, since the new Shiite-dominated government was announced on April 28.



"There is a wound that needs to be treated and Muqtada was the first to offer his medicine," said Sheik Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman for the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars after the talks with the al-Sadr delegation.

The association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, last week pinned the killing of several Sunnis, including clerics, on the Badr Brigades, the military wing of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Brigade general secretary Hadi al-Amri has denied the charge and accused the Sunni association of wanting to "push Iraq into a sectarian conflict."

Al-Sadr, a burly, black-bearded cleric, said in a television interview aired Sunday the talks were aimed at settling the feud between the association and the Badr Bridges.

"Iraq needs to stand side-by-side for the time being," al-Sadr told Al-Arabiya TV in reference to fears that extremists within Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities were pushing the country toward a civil war.

Sunni leaders announced Saturday that they had formed an alliance of tribal, political and religious groups to help Iraq's once dominant minority break out of its deepening isolation following a Shiite rise to power after Saddam's ouster.

The Sunni fall from grace is regarded by many as a key source of Iraq's raging insurgency, which claimed more victims Sunday, including Trade Ministry official Ali Moussa and his driver.

They were killed in a drive-by shooting while heading to work, ministry spokesman Faraj al-Jaafari said. Moussa ran the ministry's auditing office and was a junior official during Saddam's regime.

A roadside bomb blast also killed one Iraqi civilian and wounded another near Oyoun, a village 30 miles west of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, army Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said.

Amin said he also escaped an assassination attempt when two roadside bombs exploded late Saturday near his military convoy between Kirkuk and Hawija to the southeast.

On Sunday, a suicide car bomber blew himself near a U.S. convoy and police station in northern Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, wounding three American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen, said military spokesman Maj. Richard Goldenberg.

Five mortars apparently aimed at a police special forces base missed their target and struck southwestern Baghdad's Alam residential area late Saturday, wounding five civilians, police Capt. Talib Thamer said.

Al-Sadr resurfaced this week after lying low following fierce battles last year in the southern holy city of Najaf and Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City between his supporters and U.S. forces.

Al-Kubaisi, the Sunni association official, said he handed al-Sadr's delegation a document committing his group to certain steps, but he did not elaborate. More meetings with al-Sadr's group will be held in the future, he said.

Separately, Polish and Iraqi soldiers detained 184 terror suspects on Thursday and Friday during an operation in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

Al-Obeidi, 65, former regional chairman in the southern Iraqi city of Kut of Saddam's former ruling Baath Party, was detained May 7, 2003, and released April 28, making him the first of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis to be freed.

He was number 51 on the most-wanted list and was the "two of hearts" in the deck of cards. His lawyer said he is expected to undergo cancer treatment in Germany.

Meanwhile, a spokesman said a U.S. military investigation into who photographed and gave pictures of Saddam to a British tabloid will probably involve American soldiers guarding him in his Baghdad prison cell more than a year ago, when the shots were likely taken.

Maj. Wes Hayes also said the former dictator is "not aware that these photos were taken" and had been published. He did not elaborate.

The justice minister slammed The Sun for using the photos of Saddam, who was shown in one wearing only his underwear.

"For a newspaper to publish in order to make money is a violation of human rights," said Shandal. "Any man is innocent until he is proven guilty."

Charges against Saddam include killing rival politicians during his 30-year rule, gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait in 1990 and suppressing Kurdish and Shiite uprisings the next year.

The Romanians _ newspaper reporter Ovidiu Ohanesian, TV reporter Marie-Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Miscoci _ were kidnapped in Iraq on March 28, along with their Iraqi-American guide, Mohammed Monaf.

Their kidnappers had threatened to kill the hostages unless Romania pulled its 800 troops out of Iraq, but the Romanian president had refused.

"They are unharmed and we will announce to the public when they will return to the country," said Adriana Saftoiu, a spokeswoman for Romanian President Traian Basescu.



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