Sunnis Set Terms of Return to Panel

Sunni Arabs laid out the demands Thursday that they say must be met by the Iraqi government if they are to rejoin the committee drafting a permanent national constitution, warning that it would be a dire mistake to move ahead without Sunni participation.

The 14 remaining Sunni Muslim Arab delegates to the constitutional committee suspended their membership Wednesday, a day after one of their number and a Sunni legal advisor to the committee were gunned down in broad daylight.

“Unless you bring in all the people in the country, you can not write a constitution,” said Saleh Mutlak, one of the Sunnis appointed to the constitutional committee.

The Sunnis asked U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to intervene on their behalf with the Shiite Muslims and Kurds who together form an overwhelming majority on the 71-member committee. “They should tell the others [the Kurds and Shiites], ‘We supported you, but we are not ready to support you more unless you become reasonable’ -- and only the Americans can make them reasonable,” Mutlak said.

Top officials at the U.S. Embassy here met Wednesday with the Sunnis and were holding discussions with other groups in an effort to patch the committee back together.

Sunni demands include the appointment of an international panel to investigate the assassination this week of Mijbil Issa, the Sunni member of the constitutional committee; the appointment of armed security guards for the Sunni members of the constitutional committee; and the retraction of statements made Wednesday by Humam Hamoodi, the Shiite chairman of the committee, who suggested that work on the charter was almost completed -- even though Sunnis have yet to agree to any of the major provisions.

The Iraqi government did not immediately respond to the demands.

The transitional National Assembly is to approve a constitution by Aug. 15 and then hold a nationwide referendum on the document. U.S. officials, and many in Iraq’s government, have said that participation by Sunnis is necessary to build legitimacy for the new Iraq and defuse the largely Sunni-run insurgency.

In the last few days, though, the Kurds and Shiites negotiating the constitution have upped their own demands. The Kurds want a map to be added to the constitution that would show Kurdish lands extending along the Iraq-Iran border to Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. The area would include towns populated by Shiite Kurds before they were forced to flee to Iran and to which many have returned, said Faraj Haydari, a Kurdistan Democratic Party official.

Kurdish leaders support policies that would encourage their people to reclaim lands confiscated by dictator Saddam Hussein before he was ousted. Once the Kurds returned, a referendum would be held and residents could choose whether to become part of Kurdistan, which has functioned as a semi-independent country for almost 15 years. It is widely expected that once Kurds repopulated these areas, they would choose to join Kurdistan.

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Such a policy would include areas that other Iraqis now widely view as Arab. The Shiites, allies of the Kurds when they worked together in opposition to Hussein, have shown little enthusiasm for the proposal.

“We feel that there is some kind of deliberate procrastination and delay from other politicians towards our legal rights,” Haydari said. “I am astonished, because when we were in the opposition abroad, they just agreed upon all of that, while now, because they are in power and stronger, they deny their previous promises to us.”

Meanwhile, Shiite leaders have made it clear that they will not accept any less autonomy than the Kurds and want to be able to form a partially self-ruled Shiite region with the same sort of rights as Kurdistan, including control of some local revenues. “Look at the map. Will there be anything left of Iraq when they are done?” said Saaddoun Zubaidi, another Sunni committee member, as he left the headquarters of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni umbrella group.

As is increasingly the case, the political fight played out against a backdrop of violence. A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near Iraqi national guardsmen at a checkpoint on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, killing five people.

In Baghdad, gunmen kidnapped two Algerian diplomats, including the chief of Algeria’s mission, as they were going to lunch. It was the latest in a string of cases in which insurgents have targeted diplomats from Muslim countries whose presence they fear helps give the new Iraqi government legitimacy. Earlier this month, the Egyptian ambassador was kidnapped and reportedly killed despite strenuous efforts by his government to free him. A Bahraini diplomat and a Pakistani envoy also were targeted but were able to escape.

The diplomats captured Thursday were charge d’affaires Ali Billaroussi and diplomatic attache Azzedine bin Fadi. Billaroussi, has lived in Baghdad for two years, said Abdul Wahab Falah, an Algerian administrative employee at the embassy. “He was such a peaceful man,” Falah said.

When the incident occurred, Falah was in his car and on the phone with a friend from the embassy who was in a second car traveling with Billaroussi’s in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. “My friend said, ‘Come quick! Bring police! People in two cars are trying to kidnap Mr. Ali Billaroussi!’ ”

“By the time we arrived, he had vanished like a crystal of salt that has melted,” Falah said.

Billaroussi’s wife, who had moved to Baghdad with him, said he had called her at 2 p.m. He was probably kidnapped shortly after that. “I don’t know who did this. He called me at 2 o’clock and said he was coming soon. Oh my God, oh my God ... even the guards don’t know what happened,” she said.

Also Thursday, a videotape of Hussein appearing before an official of the Iraqi Special Tribunal set up to try him and other key figures of his regime was shown on the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Arabiya.

In the unannounced broadcast, Hussein is shown berating the robed official and complaining that he has not been permitted to consult with his lawyer.

“When have I seen a lawyer? Is it like this -- the lawyer only sees the defendant during the court session?”

Hussein, wearing a dark blue jacket and an open-necked white shirt, also mocked the new Iraqi government. “I am detained, and this is a game. I am detained by the Iraqi government appointed by the Americans.”

The judge demurred, saying, “It is an elected government.”

“Elected?” said Hussein, in scathing tones.

The video showed the official reading charges against Hussein, including ones accusing him of expropriating the property of the Faili Kurds, who are Shiites, and then deporting them to Iran in the early 1980s.

It was unclear from the broadcast when the tape was shot, but it was the first time that Hussein had been shown on television since the special tribunal announced Sunday that it had referred its first criminal case against him to court for trial. It is similarly unclear which step in the trial process was being shown.

It appeared that the videotaped reading of charges dealt with a second case for which the investigation had been completed. The first case involved the summary execution of about 150 Shiites after an assassination attempt in Dujayl, a town 35 miles northwest of the capital. Hussein also allegedly was responsible for indiscriminately rounding up and imprisoning hundreds of civilians there.

If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.

Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed, Shamil Aziz, Zainab Hussein and Salar Jaff contributed to this report.