Insurgents strike at third diplomat in Baghdad

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday offered Egypt the help of the United States in trying to gain the release of el-Sharif. In a telephone call to Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, “she offered any help that we might make available to the Egyptian government,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

“And we called for the diplomat’s early and speedy release, unharmed,” McCormack said.

He provided no details on what the United States might do to try to liberate the diplomat — if Cairo asked.

On Monday, a hard-line Sunni Arab cleric, Harith al-Dhari, condemned all kidnappings, calling them “a bad phenomenon that emerged after the occupation of Iraq by America and its allies.”

Al-Dhari heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have contacts with some insurgent groups. Sunni Arabs are estimated to make up about 20 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people and dominated Iraqi political life for generations until the collapse of Saddam’s regime in 2003.

Wooing the Sunni minority
Despite the ongoing violence, Iraq’s embattled government appeared to be making progress in moves to woo the country’s Sunni Arab minority, which forms the core of the insurgency. Many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election, meaning the community is not strongly represented in the new National Assembly.

On Monday, Dr. Adnan Al-Dulami, spokesman of the General Conference for Sunnis in Iraq, called on fellow Sunnis “to organize themselves to take part in the coming elections and to start to register their names at the offices of the electoral commission.”

Al-Dulami said Sunni clerics would soon issue a religious decree repeating the call. Clerics spearheaded the January boycott, saying any election held with U.S. and other foreign troops in the country would be invalid.

Following al-Dulaimi’s call, Humam Hammoudi, head of the committee to draft a new constitution, said 15 Sunnis had been approved to join the committee and would begin work Wednesday. The inclusion of Sunnis on the committee had been delayed because majority Shiites and Kurds had accused nominees of links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party.

In other violence on Tuesday:

• Gunmen ambushed a minibus taking seven Baghdad airport employees to work Tuesday, killing four women and wounding three men, police and hospital official said.
• One U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb northeast of Baghdad. The military said the incident occurred Tuesday in Diyala province, but released no further details.
• A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. security convoy Tuesday near the Iranian Embassy, causing no U.S. casualties but injuring one Iraqi, officials said.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in insurgent attacks since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, on April 28.

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