Sunni boycotters try softening approach

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Sunni Muslim political and religious leaders who led a boycott of Sunday's Iraqi national election are signaling a desire to engage in the political process.

The new stance may represent a turning point in efforts to involve Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime and whose opposition to the new political order has fueled the violent insurgency and threatened prolonged instability.

Sunday's election was for seats in a 275-member transitional assembly that will appoint the government and draft the constitution this year. Influential parties and groups that boycotted the election quietly have begun negotiations to play a role in writing Iraq's permanent constitution.

After yesterday's prayers at Baghdad's Umm al Qura Mosque, headquarters of the hard-line Association of Muslim Scholars, a government official was permitted to issue a call for Sunni participation in future electoral rounds.

"We ask you to participate in the next elections," said Adnan Mohammed Salman, a spokesman for the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which oversees the country's mosques. "We must prepare and unite our ranks."

By allowing such a statement to be issued from the mosque, Sunni leaders apparently are acknowledging that the best way to protect their community's interests is through participation in the political process.

Shiite Muslims make up the majority of Iraq's population but were oppressed for decades under Saddam. Their leaders encouraged them to vote, leading to a high turnout, and the top Shiite slate, the United Iraqi Alliance, is said to be ahead in early returns.

But Sunni Arabs, having lost their favored position with Saddam's ouster, feel threatened by the rising ambitions of the Shiite Arabs and the Kurds, an ethnic minority concentrated in the country's north.

Sunnis, Salman said, had "participated in the building and the defending of our beloved country. There is no power that can erase us or our role in this country."

The transitional assembly also will form a caretaker government that will rule until the permanent constitution is written and ratified in a national referendum. A new round of elections, scheduled for December, will choose a more lasting Iraqi government.

Almost immediately after Sunday's election, the Muslim Scholars group criticized the vote as illegitimate because of low turnout in many Sunni-dominated areas. Yet the association "probably will play a role in writing the constitution," said Minister of Industry Hachim Hassani, a Sunni who broke with the Iraqi Islamic Party when it withdrew from the government in protest over an assault on Fallujah last year.

Amid a general acknowledgment that Sunnis would not be fairly represented in the new assembly, negotiations are under way to remedy that imbalance.

Wednesday, ranking Sunni and Shiite politicians met in the office of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to discuss the issue. They included representatives of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, as well as prominent Sunni politicians such as Hassani, interim President Ghazi al-Yawer and the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Mohsen Abdel Hamid.

Hassani said the group agreed in principle that representatives of the Iraqi Islamic Party and possibly the Muslim Scholars group should be included on the committee that will draft the constitution. Committee members will be selected by the national assembly, but don't have to be from among the lawmakers. As a result, opposition groups can get involved without endorsing the new government.

Other possible ways to include Sunnis have been floated in recent weeks, including granting them extra seats in the assembly or assigning specific government ministries to Sunni politicians.

A meeting Thursday at the home of a Sunni elder statesman that brought together some largely Sunni groups, including those that boycotted, produced an agreement to participate in drafting the constitution, "without condition," said Wamidh Nadhmi, leader of the Arab Nationalist Trend and a spokesman for a coalition of Sunni and Shiite groups that boycotted the election.

He added, "We are taking a conciliatory line because we are frightened that things may develop into a civil war."

The groups do not speak for the insurgency, but the Association of Muslim Scholars, in particular, holds great sway in the Sunni Arab community in central and western Iraq, where there are signs of grass-roots discontent over the boycott.

Material from The Washington Post is included in this report.