November 19, 2006

Shi'ite assassinated, U.S. warns of sectarianism

By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Baghdad killed a prominent Shi'ite Islamist politician on Saturday as Condoleezza Rice appealed to Iraqis not to let sectarianism destroy their country.

In what looked like a sectarian assassination, Ali al-Adhadh of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was shot dead with his wife as he drove in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, police and SCIRI member Adnan al-Obeidi said.

Residents claim the body of a missing relative from a hospital morgue in Baquba, 65 km northeast of Baghdad, November 18, 2006. Gunmen in Baghdad killed a prominent Shi'ite Islamist politician on Saturday as Condoleezza Rice appealed to Iraqis not to let sectarianism destroy their country. (REUTERS/Helmiy al-Azawi)

U.S. Secretary of State Rice said during a visit to Vietnam that Iraqis "have one future and that is a future together. They don't have a future if they try to stay apart."

A recent surge of kidnappings by men in uniform has stoked fears of infiltration of Iraq's security forces by members of both sectarian militias and criminal groups.

Continuing arguments on Saturday between Sunni- and Shi'ite-run ministries about the fate of hostages seized on Tuesday from the Higher Education Ministry underlined the extent to which sectarianism infects politics at the top.

Tensions have also been heightened by the issue of an arrest warrant for Iraq's most prominent Sunni cleric, Harith al-Dari.

At least 36 violent deaths were reported, including 20 bodies of apparent death squad victims in Baghdad.

A curfew was imposed in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and residents reported fierce clashes nearby between U.S. troops and Sunni insurgents who dominate the once mixed city. The military had no comment. Fighting and killings are common in the city.

Obeidi said Adhadh was a member of SCIRI's Shura council, the central decision-making body of the party which was founded in Iran in the 1980s to oppose Saddam Hussein and which is now the biggest party in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition.

He had been due to leave as ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, a city where he was long SCIRI's representative. At that time the U.N. post was held by Saddam's brother Barzan, who was sentenced to death along with the former president this month for crimes against humanity committed against Shi'ites.

Saddam's fellow minority Sunnis accuse SCIRI, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and its armed wing, the Badr organisation, of running death squads, as well as being involved in killing defence lawyers in Saddam's trial -- charges they strongly deny.

KIDNAP CONFUSION

In the row over the kidnapped civil servants, an official at the Sunni-run ministry said he had lists of 66 people, including 20 visitors, who were still unaccounted for.

He said a released hostage had seen two others suffocated after being gagged and tortured. Another official said five hostages released on Friday had been tortured.

The U.S. military said in a statement that Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. advisers had conducted a raid against a kidnapping cell in Sadr City, a Shi'ite militia stronghold where witnesses said the ministry hostages had been taken.

But a spokesman for the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry, Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf, said: "This matter is now closed and we have declared all the hostages released."

In the south of the country, security forces were hunting for five kidnapped Western contractors, also by men in uniform.

Four Americans and an Austrian were seized in the hijack of a truck convoy near the Kuwaiti border on Thursday. Amid great confusion about other incidents involving Western contractors in the area, police said three British guards detained after a clash with police on Friday had been handed to British troops.

British officials were unavailable for comment.

Thursday's convoy hijack in Iraq's oil-rich south underlined the extent to which militias and gangs are undermining stability well beyond Baghdad, despite U.S. assurances that the vast bulk of violence in Iraq takes place in the capital.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office sought to quell the idea that he had admitted to Al Jazeera television on Friday that the intervention in Iraq had so far been disastrous.

When the interviewer suggested the period since the U.S.-led invasion had been "pretty much of a disaster", Blair replied:

"It has, but you see, what I say to people is: 'Why is it difficult in Iraq?'"

A spokesman said he had merely acknowledged the question.

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said the situation had reached a "critical level": "There is no way that these levels of violence can be sustained," he told Al Jazeera, adding that ministers were planning a crisis meeting to bolster resolve to "fight terrorism" and dissolve militias.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra; Arshad Mohammed in Hanoi; Paul Majendie in London; Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ahmed Rasheed, Ross Colvin and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)

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