Sunni Clerics Plan Edict On Greater Political Role

"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."

In Iraq, mosques are owned and financed by the government. Dulaimi, as head of the endowment, functions not as a political figure in the government, but as a facilitator of religious life.

Abdul Rahman Nuaimi, a Sunni member of the National Assembly's constitution committee, said: "When an important figure in the community, like the head of the Sunni Endowment, urges people and clergymen to participate in the elections, this will help the process. This will help to move forward and defeat all the obstacles we face in the process of writing the constitution."

The move by the National Assembly Monday to add 15 Sunnis to the committee, expanding its membership to 71, was another key development in a constitution-writing process that is six weeks from a deadline for producing a draft document. Though the National Assembly was elected in January with the principal mandate of writing the document, the committee was not formed until May, and it initially included only two Sunni Arabs.

The expanded committee will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, and its chairman, Humam Hammoudi, said the new members would be shown "the drafts we have reached so far," the Reuters news agency reported.

Meanwhile, authorities said there was no sign of the whereabouts of Ihab Sherif, Egypt's top diplomat in Iraq, who disappeared Saturday night and is presumed to have been kidnapped. Egyptian officials told news services that Egypt had received no ransom demands or statements from anyone claiming to have abducted the envoy.

In Baghdad's western Bayaa neighborhood, a remote-controlled car bomb killed two civilians and narrowly missed a passing U.S. military patrol, witnesses said.

"I thought that it was a broken-down car that someone left there," said Ahmad Shihab, an employee with a government construction company that has a project near the site of the attack. "Then, after an American patrol passed by, it exploded. I saw black smoke first, then felt the impact. A huge blaze with metal parts splashed everywhere."

U.S. and Iraqi troops swept through a western Baghdad neighborhood on Monday, arresting about 100 suspected insurgents in a fresh crackdown near the city's airport, the Associated Press reported.

In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen killed police Capt. Ahmen Muayad, a bodyguard for the provincial governor, as he left his house Monday morning, according to police Gen. Saeed Mohammed. Another police officer, Lt. Ahmen Mutaz, was gunned down in the city center.

Special correspondents Khalid Alsaffar and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and Dlovan Brwari in Mosul contributed to this report.