Sunni bloc quits Iraqi Cabinet

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s chances of forging cooperation between his Shiite-led government and Sunni Arab foes suffered another blow Friday when the main Sunni bloc withdrew from the Cabinet to protest a criminal investigation of one of its ministers.

The announcement comes on top of the bloc’s decision a week ago to boycott parliament sessions over another issue: the attempted ouster of the assembly’s speaker, a Sunni, for rude behavior.

As Iraq’s political situation became increasingly mired in sectarian finger-pointing, the U.S. military reported another lethal assault. Five soldiers were killed and seven wounded Thursday in south Baghdad when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and fired guns and grenades at the stricken convoy, the military said.

U.S. military officials said Friday that the troop buildup was continuing to make progress. Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr., commander of U.S. troops in Baghdad, said nearly half of the capital’s 474 neighborhoods were fully under American control, up from a third earlier this month.

Fil addressed reporters at the Pentagon via a teleconference from his headquarters in Iraq.

President Bush has sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq to try to quell the violence, in the hope that a stable environment will make it easier for Maliki’s government to push through key legislation. The latest political squabbling was likely to heighten frustration among critics of the war in Congress who have been demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Leaders of the Iraqi Accordance Front, which has six Cabinet posts and 44 seats in the 275-member parliament, said its ministers would step down indefinitely. The bloc’s spokesman, Salim Abdullah Jabouri, said it had demanded an apology for the culture minister, the target of the investigation, and compensation for damage allegedly done to his home during a police raid this week.

“We also called the ministers of other blocs to show their consolidation with us,” Jabouri said.

The minister, Asad Kamal Hashimi, remained in hiding after the search Tuesday. Hashimi is suspected of involvement in a February 2005 assassination attempt on another Sunni Muslim lawmaker, Mithal Alusi, who lost his two sons, Amal and Gamal, in the shooting.

The secular Alusi often has been at odds with many Sunni lawmakers.

In comments Friday on state-run Al Arabiya television, Alusi said witnesses to the 2005 incident had identified “the criminals and the killers,” who he said were hiding inside the capital’s high-security Green Zone.

Alusi also said he did not blame the Iraq Accordance Front. “There are good fellows and members of parliament from this front,” he said.

The withdrawal leaves the Cabinet with 25 members, including Maliki, down from its full complement of 37. In April, Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr ordered six ministers loyal to him to resign to protest Maliki’s refusal to support a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Two weeks ago, Sadr also called an indefinite boycott by his bloc’s 33 parliament members to protest the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The Sunni bloc, meanwhile, began its boycott this week after lawmakers voted to oust Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani for rude and bullying behavior toward legislators. Mashadani has refused to leave.

None of this bodes well for the chances of the passage of legislation sought by Washington as evidence of political progress. Iraqi lawmakers are scheduled to begin a monthlong vacation at the end of July, and the White House has expressed hope that by then it at least will have approved a measure on the distribution of the country’s oil revenues

The latest U.S. military deaths brought the number of troops killed this month to 100 and the total since the war began in March 2003 to 3,577, according to icasualties.org.

The American military statement Friday gave few details of the attack, but the strength of the explosion indicated that it was caused by one of the highly lethal roadside bombs that U.S. officials say are smuggled from neighboring Iran. Iran denies the accusation.

Also Friday, Sadr called off plans for a march to Samarra, a mainly Sunni city, to protest the bombing June 13 of the Golden Mosque. The cancellation of the event, planned for Thursday, was announced at Friday prayers in the southern city of Kufa.

Sheik Asaad Nassiri, a Sadr aide, said the decision to cancel was made because government was “not capable” of protecting marchers.

Sadr, who is known for his vehement anti-U.S. rhetoric and who has hundreds of thousands of followers, had said the march, planned for the birthday of a key religious figure, was meant to unify Shiites and Sunnis in the aftermath of the blast, the second at the shrine in 16 months. The first bombing, in February 2006, destroyed the mosque’s golden dome and unleashed bloody Shiite-Sunni warfare that continues today.

Political leaders had warned that the march could fuel more violence.

Sadr’s decision represented a concession to Maliki’s government, which had discouraged the procession on the grounds that the route to Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, could not be fully secured. But Sadr’s stated reason, the government’s inability to protect pilgrims, was another indication of the tension between the two figures.

tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Peter Spiegel in Washington, special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.