BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 -- Iraqi officials announced Monday that they had captured a top lieutenant of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi who admitted involvement in a substantial share of the car bombings carried out in Iraq since August 2003.
Sami Muhammad Ali Said Jaaf, who was taken into custody nine days ago, claimed to have supervised construction of 32 car bombs, according to Thaer Naqib, a spokesman for the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Naqib said Jaaf, who used the nom de guerre Abu Umar Kurdi, was captured in a raid in Baghdad Jan. 15. There was no way to immediately verify Jaaf's admissions or the government's claim that he had been involved in 75 percent of the car bombings in Baghdad since 2003.
"I think they do have somebody fairly important," said a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, adding that he was not familiar with details of the arrest.
With historic elections set for Sunday, the announcement of Jaaf's capture was one of a flurry of bulletins issued by the spokesman for Allawi, who has swamped the capital's streets and television airwaves with glossy campaign advertisements. The prime minister's office also announced the capture of Zarqawi's "chief of propaganda"; 10 insurgent leaders in Ramadi, the capital of troubled Anbar province west of Baghdad; and a resistance leader in the violent northern city of Mosul.
"Every arrest of a terrorist in Iraq is making our country safer, bringing us one step closer to a peaceful and prosperous Iraq," Naqib said.
In a setback for the elections, however, another political party anchored among Iraq's Sunni Muslim population announced that it was withdrawing support for the vote.
The United Arab Front said it was boycotting the election because of what it called preferential treatment accorded ethnic Kurds in the disputed city of Kirkuk. The party complained that a decision to reopen registration in the city swelled the voter rolls with Kurds who now live elsewhere after having been pushed out by the government of Saddam Hussein.
"What the election commission did makes the results of the elections in Kirkuk predictable: It will be for the benefit of the Kurds," said Wasafi Asi, secretary general of the United Arab Front.
Asi added that the influx of Kurdish votes will further unsettle a dicey security situation in the area, while essentially fixing the outcome of any future referendum to decide whether Kirkuk joins the sections of northeastern Iraq dominated by Kurds.
"There are Arabs and Turkomens in the city in addition to the Kurds," Asi said. "It is an Iraqi city for all. It cannot be considered a part of Kurdistan."
Since the fall of Hussein, returning exile groups have invested Kirkuk with nationalist significance, making the a cosmopolitan city -- many of whose residents speak three languages -- a flash point. The Kurds, in particular, are eager to reverse Hussein's official policy of "Arabization," which for decades banished Kurdish residents from the oil-rich city.
The Transitional Administrative Law that governs Iraq has provisions to restore the rights of displaced Kurds. But citing the slow pace of progress, Iraq's two major Kurdish parties last month threatened to pull out of the Jan. 30 elections.
In the end, Kurdish participation was sealed by reopening voter registration to allow displaced Kurds to vote in Kirkuk. U.S. officials estimate that as many as 100,000 additional Kurds may add their names to Kirkuk's voter rolls during the extended registration period.
