Conference Postponed Amid Fraud Allegations

The conference of top civic and tribal leaders to pick a national assembly was postponed Thursday amid allegations of fraud and corruption.

The announcement of the delay came as violence and kidnappings by insurgents seeking to undermine the U.S. presence and the new Iraqi government continued, especially in Ramadi, where three sons of the governor of Al Anbar province were seized. On Wednesday, at least 68 Iraqis died in the deadliest car bombing since Iraq gained sovereignty last month.

“These are forces of evil who are acting against us,” interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he called for a force from other Muslim countries to help bring security to Iraq. “We are going to suffer casualties -- we are suffering casualties. We are going to -- and we have to -- end their terrorism route,” he said at a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The response from the Islamic world to the request for troops has been lukewarm.

Early today, Powell made an unannounced trip to Baghdad where he was expected to hold talks with senior Iraqi officials, Associated Press reported. Powell is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Iraq since the interim government took power June 28.

Under pressure from the United Nations, organizers of the conference to select Iraq’s interim national assembly said they were reluctantly postponing the event, set to begin Saturday, for two weeks. There have been allegations of fraud and violence at regional caucuses to select the 1,000 delegates.

The national conference is a key element of a plan devised by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to move Iraq toward free elections and a permanent constitution by next year. The interim assembly will have the power to approve the 2005 budget and overturn laws.

The situation in Ramadi, which has been festering for weeks with daily attacks on U.S. soldiers, took a more disturbing turn when the governor’s three sons were kidnapped Wednesday. U.S. military sources said they believed that militants conspired with the sons’ security guards to kidnap them. The sources said there were no signs of any shots being fired or of doors being forcedopen.

According to an account by a member of the governor’s security detail, about 200 insurgents in daylight surrounded the affluent neighborhood where the governor lives. The militants entered his home and took the sons. They had planned to kidnap the women in the family as well but left them after a neighbor, an influential sheik from a major tribe in Al Anbar, intervened, said one member of the security detail who was there.

Another member of the security detail, calling the militants mujahedin, said: “The governor received several threats from the mujahedin and was told to resign, but he didn’t.... So to be honest with you, we are with the mujahedin. I am ready to give my rifle to the mujahedin.”

The governor, Abdul Karim Burjis Arrawi, a former police chief and father of five, has been a strong supporter of the U.S. presence in Al Anbar province, which covers much of western Iraq. He endorsed the U.S. soldiers’ presence in Ramadi, townspeople said.

Arrawi’s stand appears to have irritated residents, who accuse him of failing to provide enough water and electricity and of being too close to the U.S.

Ramadi, like its neighbor Fallouja, is a tribal community in which kinship ties and a shared involvement in the security forces of the regime of deposed President Saddam Hussein have created strong bonds and a fear of the changes signaled by the new government.

But Ramadi, a desert city, was just one of many troubled spots in the country Thursday.

There was fighting southeast of Baghdad near Suwayrah, where eight Iraqi security officers were killed and nine wounded in a clash with insurgents.

In the northern town of Hawija, gunmen ambushed an Army patrol, killing a soldier, the military said. There was also an hours-long gunfight in Fallouja. Nine Iraqis were killed and 16 others injured, some of them critically, said a doctor at Fallouja Hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken.

Five more foreign hostages were seized Thursday, according to tapes broadcast on Arab stations. However, there was no confirmation from the hostages’ native countries. According to a tape shown on Dubai Television, a satellite channel based in the United Arab Emirates, four Jordanian hostages were seized by a militant group calling itself the “Death Squad of Iraqi Resistance.” The group threatened to take “appropriate measures” if the transport company that employed the hostages continued to work with the U.S. military.

Elsewhere, a Somali was said to have been taken captive by a group linked to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a militant thought to have links to Al Qaeda.

In a separate hostage development, the militant group that seized seven truck drivers last week threatened to kill one of the hostages by this evening unless its demands were met. The group calling itself the “Holders of the Black Banners” has asked that the Kuwaiti company that employed the drivers cease all work for the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, there were negative signals on the support that Iraqi and U.S. troops can expect from other countries.

In Kiev, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk announced that Ukraine was holding talks with the U.S. and Poland about an eventual phaseout of 1,600 Ukrainian troops deployed in Wasit province, which is southeast of Baghdad and along the Iranian border.

“We have started talks with our partners -- Poland and the United States -- to set a time frame. We cannot stay there for a long time, without a concrete time frame,” Marchuk said at a news conference.

The deployment has been deeply unpopular in Ukraine, where many political analysts have linked the troops to President Leonid D. Kuchma’s attempt to shore up support in the U.S. after revelations that in July 2000 he approved the transfer of a radar system to Hussein’s Iraq.

Six Ukrainian troops have been killed in Iraq and 15 others injured. Ukraine has been rocked by a news report that a Ukrainian soldier told human rights commissioner Nina Karpacheva that he had been “tortured” for misbehavior in Iraq.

Times staff writer Rubin reported from Baghdad and special correspondent Salman from Ramadi. Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti and Edmund Sanders in Baghdad and Kim Murphy in Moscow contributed to this report.