Finnish Civilians Slain in Iraq

Two Finnish businessmen were shot to death on their way to a meeting in Baghdad on Monday in the latest in a series of attacks on civilians that U.S. officials believe is aimed at disrupting the return of sovereignty to an Iraqi government in June.

The shootings occurred after a civilian judge, an Iraqi police chief and two of his bodyguards were killed in two incidents outside the Iraqi capital. Gunmen opened fire at civil defense troops in two cities, killing one and injuring 11.

“The extremists have started shifting away from the hard targets of the coalition military and the Iraqi security forces [and] are now going out of their way to specifically target softer targets ... for the simple purpose of trying to break our will as this country moves forward,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for coalition forces.

The prospects for a smooth handover were dealt a serious blow when a powerful Shiite Muslim cleric urged the United Nations to reject the interim constitution. Complaining that the document “enshrines sectarianism and ethnicity in the future political system,” Ayatollah Ali Sistani said he would refuse to work with a U.N. team scheduled to help organize the transition to Iraqi self-rule unless the international body rejected the constitution, signed March 8.

In a letter Friday to top U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Sistani was critical of the constitution’s provision giving the presidency to a three-member council consisting of a Shiite, a Sunni and a Kurd, a structure that he said could cripple the future presidency or force it to rely on a foreign power to mediate disputes.

In the attacks that authorities predict will continue to increase as the June 30 transition date approaches, civilians were not the only victims.

The Pentagon announced the deaths of four U.S. soldiers. Pvt. Dustin L. Kreider, 19, of Riverton, Kan., died Sunday near Samarra during a weapon test-firing. Pfc. Jason C. Ludlam, 22, of Arlington, Texas, was electrocuted while laying telephone wire Friday in Baqubah. First Lt. Michael W. Vega, 41, of Lathrop, Calif., died Saturday in Washington from injuries sustained when his military vehicle rolled over in Diwaniya on March 11. Pfc. Christopher E. Hudson, 21, of Carmel, Ind., died Sunday in Baghdad when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

The military also identified two soldiers killed by a rocket Saturday near Fallouja: Maj. Mark D. Taylor, 41, of Stockton, and Spc. Matthew J. Sandri, 24, of Shamokin, Penn.

On Monday, 13 British troops were injured in two explosions in the southern city of Basra.

The violence belied the U.S. military’s assertions that terrorists were being systematically neutralized, and the growing number of foreign civilians targeted threatened to undermine the economic normalization that is a cornerstone of plans for a peaceful democratic transition.

The two Finns, shot in a Baghdad underpass, were part of a group of 10 businessmen and technicians visiting to lobby for business contracts, said Petri Tuomi-Nikula, spokesman for the Finnish Embassy in London.

In the northern city of Mosul, one civil defense officer died and three others were injured when they were shot Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Kimmitt denied that eight civil defense troops injured Monday in a car bomb attack in the town of Balad were placed in vulnerable positions as coalition forces begin withdrawing to the relative safety of their highly fortified bases.

“To suggest that somehow they’re being used as cannon fodder, somehow they are being used as something other than full partners in the security requirements here in the country, I think would misstate the fact,” he said. “We have worked alongside them.... And frankly, the coalition soldiers have fought and died alongside them as well.”

Sistani’s letter is another chapter in the continuing brinkmanship between the occupation authority’s effort to ensure a pluralistic government and the majority Shiites’ effort to ensure that they will have power commensurate with their numbers.

His letter said he would not participate in meetings “unless the U.N. declares clearly that this [interim constitution] does not obligate the elected national assembly with anything, and will not be mentioned in any resolution from the Security Council pertaining to Iraq.”

Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin and Edmund Sanders in Baghdad and special correspondent Roaa Ahmed Shawkat in Mosul contributed.