Iraqi leader leaves door open for Sunnis’ return

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki refused Sunday to accept the resignations of six Cabinet members, keeping the door open for a possible return of Sunni ministers whose departure last week caused a crisis in his unity government.

Members of the Sunni Arab bloc known as the Iraqi Accordance Front, or Tawafiq, said Maliki’s action would not affect their decision. But a senior member held out the possibility that a resolution could be reached at a planned summit of leaders of Iraq’s main ethnic and religious blocs.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of four soldiers. At least 3,669 American personnel have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks military deaths.

This morning, a suicide bomber detonated a dump truck filled with explosives in a densely populated Shiite Muslim area in the northern Iraqi city of Tall Afar, about 240 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing at least 25 people, police said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he believed the troop buildup completed in June was beginning to improve security, but blamed Iraqi politicians for failing to pass legislation aimed at reconciliation.

He expressed disappointment over the Sunni withdrawal from the Cabinet, as well as parliament’s decision to take the month of August off. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that he had urged the country’s presidency council, which consists of its president and two vice presidents, not to follow parliament’s example.

His message, he said, was blunt: “For every day that we buy you, we’re buying it with American blood, and the idea of you going on vacation is unacceptable.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice struck a more conciliatory note, telling “Fox News Sunday” that “the leadership is not on recess, and the presidency council and the prime minister are still working.” But she said the Bush administration had told Iraqi officials that they needed to work harder.

U.S. officials, under pressure to show progress in a report to be delivered in Congress on Sept. 15, had hoped that giving Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority a stake in the government would foster reconciliation with the majority Shiite Muslims.

President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who has been leading efforts to save the unity government, said Maliki had informed him of his decision to reject the resignations during a meeting Sunday that also included Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, a Shiite.

Sunni Vice President Tariq Hashimi, who has complained of being sidelined by Maliki and other Shiite leaders, was not invited.

At issue is what Tawafiq considers to be the refusal of the dominant Shiite alliance to treat Sunni Arabs as equal partners in the government. Some of Maliki’s closest aides accuse Tawafiq of links to the insurgency.

Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zikam Ali Zubaie and five other Sunni ministers withdrew from the Cabinet on Wednesday, citing the government’s failure to respond to a long list of demands, including the release of detainees not charged with specific crimes, respect for human rights, the disbanding of private militias and the involvement of all major parties in security decisions.

Hashimi, the Sunni vice president, did not resign. The only other Sunni who remains in the government is the defense minister, who does not belong to Tawafiq.

Conciliatory stance

Maliki, whose office accused the Sunni bloc of political blackmail when it first threatened to bolt, has since adopted a more conciliatory stance. He said Sunday that he hoped the Sunnis would reconsider and promised to act quickly on those demands that were “legitimate and logical,” Talabani told reporters.

Iyad Samarrai, secretary-general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading member of Tawafiq, expressed hope that progress could be made at the promised summit among Maliki, Talabani, Hashimi, Abdul Mehdi and Massoud Barzani, head of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

Samarrai said the Sunnis would ask that a new power-sharing relationship be spelled out. They also are seeking “real action” on their demands.

“To be considered as equal partners, this is the main issue,” Samarrai said. No date has been set for the summit.

Tawafiq’s leader traveled to Sunni-dominated Al Anbar province Sunday to meet with political, security and tribal leaders. Adnan Dulaimi’s trip appeared designed to underscore that his movement has backing from average Sunnis.

The U.S. military released new details about the killing of the alleged mastermind behind the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra last year that unleashed a torrent of sectarian killing and was a turning point in Iraq’s civil war.

Haytham Badri was among at least four men spotted by surveillance aircraft Thursday setting up what appeared to be an ambush, said Rear Adm. Mark Fox, a military spokesman.

U.S. helicopters strafed the position, killing the four suspects, including Badri and one foreigner, the military said. Ground forces also found weapons and detained seven other suspects at the site, the military said.

Fox identified Badri as an operational planner for the Sunni Arab militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq. Besides masterminding the February 2006 bombing that destroyed the Samarra shrine’s famed golden dome, Badri also was responsible for a second bombing that collapsed the mosque’s two minarets in June, Fox said.

Baghdad attack

In violence Sunday, a mortar barrage in southeast Baghdad killed at least 13 people and injured 17, police said. Some of the shells landed at a gas station, where many of the victims were lined up, causing a fireball that engulfed at least 15 cars, police said.

An Iraqi civil servant, who identified himself by a traditional nickname, Abu Atwar, said he was in line with other drivers when the mortar shells started falling. “Some of the mortars landed on the cars in the line ahead, some of them on nearby houses.”

Abu Atwar jumped into his car and drove away as quickly as he could. Looking back, he said he saw “people screaming near the station, chaos.”

“I won’t forget this,” he said. “I was really scared.”

Police in Baghdad recovered the bodies of 18 people shot execution-style, considered an indication of sectarian killing. Two women were among the victims.

Two of the U.S. soldiers were killed in combat Sunday in Baghdad, the military said in a statement. The others died in separate incidents the previous day, one in combat in a western section of Baghdad and another when a bomb exploded close to his vehicle near the capital.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Alan C. Miller in Washington and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.