Iraqi Council's Leader Is Slain

Blast Further Damages U.S. Stability Effort; Nerve Agent Detected in Separate Incident

BAGHDAD, May 17 -- The president of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed in a suicide car bombing Monday as his motorcade waited to enter the headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority.

The assassination of Izzedin Salim demonstrated the brutal efficiency of the anti-occupation insurgency six weeks before the United States intends to hand over limited power to an interim Iraqi government. It also infuriated several Iraqi political leaders who have cooperated with the occupation, signaling a difficult time ahead for U.S. officials as they struggle to form a broadly acceptable government.

U.S. military officials also said Monday that a small amount of the nerve agent sarin was detected at the site of a recent detonation of a roadside bomb. The bomb was rigged using an artillery shell that apparently came from an Iraqi army stockpile, but a U.S. military spokesman said whoever rigged the shell probably did not know it contained a chemical agent.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the presence of sarin had been detected in a field test and could not be confirmed until further tests were carried out.

The discovery of the sarin bomb, which reportedly caused two minor injuries, was announced hours after the attack that killed Salim, a Shiite Muslim who assumed the U.S.-appointed Governing Council's rotating presidency on May 1, and six other Iraqis.

Salim was in a five-car convoy of Nissan Patrols waiting in a line of vehicles to enter the fortified occupation compound known as the Green Zone, on a street well known as a route traveled by Governing Council members. About 9:45 a.m., several witnesses said, a maroon Volkswagen Passat cut out of line and sped toward the Patrol convoy before exploding in flame, smoke and shrapnel.

The blast gouged a hole four feet deep in the pavement and sent several cars somersaulting across the scrub-covered median.

"I tried to hit the car to stop what I saw was going to happen, and suddenly everything exploded," said Ahmed Jawad, Salim's nephew and one of 19 bodyguards with him, who was being treated at Yarmouk Hospital for shrapnel wounds to his face. "I don't know what has happened to my colleagues, whether they are dead or alive."

Military officials said the attack bore the hallmarks of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian allegedly linked to al Qaeda. It marked a severe setback in the U.S. effort to stabilize Iraq before the scheduled handover of limited authority. It followed weeks of targeted violence against Iraqi civilians and a politically charged U.S. military operation in the Shiite holy cities of southern Iraq that has inflamed public opinion against the occupation.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy who has taken a leading role in forming the interim government, called Salim's killing a "criminal act [that] has taken the life of one of Iraq's most loyal and patriotic citizens."

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, met at noon with some of the council members to express sorrow over Salim's assassination. In a statement, Bremer said: "The terrorists who are seeking to destroy Iraq have struck a cruel blow with this vile act today. But they will be defeated."

As the country's acting president, Salim was the highest-ranking Iraqi political figure to die in what appears to be an orchestrated effort by the insurgents to target Iraqis working with the occupation authority. He was the second of the original 25 council members to be killed since the panel was formed last July; Akila Hashimi, one of three women on the council, was gunned down on her way to work in September.

Salim, whose given name was Abdul Zahra Othman Muhammad, was a newspaper editor and religious scholar from the southern city of Basra who agitated clandestinely against the government of Saddam Hussein, ousted in April 2003 by the U.S.-led invasion. He was jailed during Hussein's rule for his membership in the once-outlawed Islamic Dawa party, one of the most influential among several Shiite organizations.

Many council members said Monday that complying with the scheduled transfer of some political powers to Iraqis is the best way to deter the insurgency. Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni Muslim council member who was selected to serve the remaining two weeks of Salim's month-long term as president and through June 30, said, "We are determined, more than before, to fulfill the dreams of our lost colleagues.