By Andy Mosher and Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 4, 2005 3:24 PM

BAGHDAD, July 4 -- Several Sunni Muslim clerics have prepared a decree calling on members of Iraq's disaffected Sunni Arab minority to vote in coming elections and participate in the writing of a new constitution, a prominent Sunni leader said Monday.

Adnan Dulaimi, who heads the Sunni Endowment, the government agency responsible for Sunni religious affairs, said the framers of the decree, or fatwa, would seek the support of other groups in the fractious Sunni community. If broadly embraced, Dulaimi and other Sunni leaders said Monday, the decree could pave the way to full political participation by a segment of Iraqi society that boycotted elections in January and has scant representation in the current government.

The push for the fatwa, together with formal approval by Iraq's National Assembly on Monday of the addition of 15 Sunnis to the committee writing the new constitution, suggested that slow and often contentious efforts to bring Sunni Arabs into the political sphere were beginning to bear fruit. The Shiite Muslim-led government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari has encouraged Sunni Arabs to embrace politics and to abandon the deadly insurgency that Sunnis from Iraq and foreign countries have waged for nearly two years.

Jafari's coalition of Shiite parties won the most votes in the Jan. 30 elections, gaining a majority in the 275-seat National Assembly and putting Iraq's Shiite majority in power for the first time in the country's modern history. Sunni Arabs, who had dominated political and military institutions until President Saddam Hussein's government was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, boycotted the vote and emerged with only 17 assembly seats.

The Sunni Arab leadership, traditionally more fractious than the Shiites, began moving away from rejection of politics and the new government in April, when the influential Association of Muslim Scholars supported a fatwa calling on Sunnis to reverse course and serve in Iraq's nascent security forces. The fatwa announced today by Dulaimi would call for Sunni participation in writing the constitution, a draft of which is to be written before Aug. 15; for all Iraqis to vote in the next election, which would be held Dec. 15 if the constitution is prepared on time and ratified in an October referendum; and for Sunnis to serve on the country's electoral commission.

The Muslim scholars' support for the new fatwa, while crucial, could prove elusive; the group has maintained that no Iraqi government can be considered legitimate unless U.S. and other foreign military forces leave the country, or at least set a deadline for doing so. Dulaimi said in an interview today that "we will contact the Association of Muslim Scholars and urge them to join the initiative, and we hope to reach a compromise that satisfies all."

Another pivotal Sunni group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, immediately voiced support for the proposal. Noting that the party was among the first Sunni organizations to encourage voting in the next election, Tariq Hashimi, the party's secretary general, said that Sunnis' respect for religious leadership ensured that "if a fatwa is issued to urge people to participate, this will help to improve the legal and political situation of the elections and the constitution. It will also help to end the confusion in the Iraqi community. People are confused whether the constitution and elections are legitimate or not."

Subhi Nawzen Tawfik, a political science professor at the University of Baghdad's International Studies Center, called the initiative "a very important development."

In addition to redressing the imbalance of political power brought on by the Sunnis' "strategic mistake" in staying away from the January election, he said, it would appeal to Sunni insurgents who took up arms because they believed the current political system was imposed on Iraq by foreign powers.

"There is no doubt that the Sunnis make up the core of the real, original resistance against occupation, a distinction which no one can dispute," Tawfik said. "Thus, when the head of the Sunni Endowment calls for serious Sunni participation, and makes an appeal for calming down the situation, his appeal will be heeded."

Special correspondent Khalid Alsaffar contributed to this report.