Sunnis Must Have Security, Leader Says

A leader of Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political bloc said Sunday that he would shun any government that included officials responsible for police brutality against his minority sect, a stand aimed at removing the powerful Shiite interior minister.

Tariq Hashimi of the Iraqi Accordance Front spelled out its conditions for entering a “national unity” administration after most Iraqi leaders called for such an outcome in order to quell the Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.

Sunni participation in Iraq’s first full-term government since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein is the top U.S. diplomatic priority here. Excluding the Sunnis could doom efforts to end the fighting through political means and to reduce the number U.S. forces in Iraq.

At least 17 Iraqis died in weekend fighting, and authorities Sunday found the bodies of 29 men apparently seized by insurgents last week after they had volunteered to join the police.

Two U.S. airmen were killed and another was wounded Sunday by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the military announced today.

The names of the airmen, assigned to the 586th Expeditionary Mission Support Group, were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Talks on forming a government have intensified since Friday’s release of complete but uncertified returns from the Dec. 15 parliamentary election and are expected to last at least six weeks.

The Shiite Muslim and Kurdish blocs leading the transitional government are expected to join forces in a new ruling alliance. They won 181 seats in parliament, three short of the two-thirds majority required to form a new government, but could pick up the needed seats by making deals with smaller Shiite and Kurdish groups.

Most Shiite and Kurdish leaders have endorsed the U.S. goal of broadening the government to include Sunnis, whose two main blocs got 55 seats in parliament. Such an achievement, however, would require hard compromises among Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

“There is no preordained outcome that we’re going to get a deal involving all three of these groups,” said a Western diplomat monitoring the talks. “They’re all saying they are willing to explore it, but success is by no means assured.”

At a news conference Sunday, Hashimi said his Sunni bloc’s first condition for entering the government was a guarantee of personal security for Sunnis, who he said had suffered abuse by the transitional regime’s Interior Ministry police.

“We have red lines against some figures who have harmed our people,” he said without naming names. “We will not allow anyone who participated in human rights violations to take any ministerial posts.”

The remark was clearly aimed at Bayan Jabr, whose reputation as interior minister has been stained by allegations of torture and killings of Sunni prisoners held by the predominantly Shiite police. Jabr, a powerful figure in the ruling Shiite alliance, has denied involvement in the alleged abuses.

Hashimi did not say who should run the Interior Ministry, nor did he insist that a Sunni get the job. That left open the possibility that the Shiite alliance, which has insisted on keeping control of the ministry, could find a candidate acceptable to the Sunnis.

The Sunni leader set other terms: He demanded an end to official corruption, a “charter of honor” that renounces sectarian and ethnic strife, an agreement to set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces, and a promise “not to hamper” constitutional changes demanded by Sunnis to prevent the Shiite and Kurdish regions from dominating Iraq’s oil wealth.

The latter demand could be the most difficult to resolve. Abdelaziz Hakim, a powerful Shiite politician, opposes significant changes in the constitution, as do most of the Shiites elected to parliament.

Hashimi is expected to be a key player in negotiations over the coming weeks, along with President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, both Kurds, and either Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari or Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi -- whoever is chosen the Shiite alliance’s candidate to lead the new government.

Before the talks can advance, officials must resolve challenges by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni parties to the precise seat allocations announced Friday, a process that will take 10 days.

Police said the 29 bodies found Sunday were apparently those of men who had traveled in a larger group from the city of Samarra to Baghdad to join the police force. Dozens in the group were rejected, and many were abducted at insurgent roadblocks while returning home last week. Ten other bodies were found Saturday in the same area of Salahuddin province, about 40 miles north of Baghdad.

In Sunday’s deadliest incident, assailants fired rocket-propelled grenades into the home of a Shiite policeman in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing his brother and four of his brother’s children, ages 6 to 13.

Meanwhile, the two parties of the Kurdish bloc signed an accord to create a single Kurdish government in three northern provinces, formally ending years of division and animosity that erupted in violence in the mid-1990s. The unification was aimed at bolstering the region’s relative autonomy from Iraq’s central government.

The accord will put Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, which runs Irbil and Dahuk provinces, in charge of Sulaymaniya province as well. A representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan will be named to head the region’s militia, and Cabinet posts will be divided.

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Times staff writer Raheem Salman and special correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this report.