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New Attacks Threaten Political Truce in Iraq
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The country's most revered Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on Saturday urged his followers to participate in the elections, though he did not endorse any political party.
Some Sunnis say the government's security apparatus, including the army and police, has been infiltrated by Shiite militias that are carrying out attacks in league with the United States.
Kubaisi said the Association of Muslim Scholars might stop cooperating on political matters because of the "continuing breaches of human rights violations by the Iraqi forces and American occupation forces." He brandished pictures of a dead man and his 1-year-old son who, he said, were killed by Iraqi forces, as well as pictures of three farmers he said were killed by U.S. forces west of Baghdad. These were "crimes against humanity committed by the Americans against helpless civilians," he said.
Kubaisi's talk of withdrawal "is a powerful threat," said Khalaf Elayan, head of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni political party aligned with the association. "If they decide to withdraw from the political process, we will withdraw as well. We are all gathered under one umbrella."
If the Sunni Arab parties boycott the elections as they did the January election for the current government, "those who were marginalized before will be marginalized again," he said.
Naseer Ani, head of one of the largest Sunni political parties in the bloc, said a decision had not been made on whether to participate in the elections. But he said the parties were unhappy that the Cairo conference had produced few results.
"The Cairo conference agreed to stop the violations and raids against Sunnis," he said. "But that didn't happen."
Fresh evidence of the tactics used by both sides was provided in the form of a compact disc that was given to a reporter in Tikrit by a Sunni mosque official. The disc shows a masked man speaking for the Mujaheddin Army, a Sunni-led insurgency group, and two women, identified as Najal and Suad.
The two women, who worked with Iraqi and U.S. forces, are shown nervously "confessing" to having been used sexually. They are blindfolded, and then they are shot. The bodies were found Nov. 21 in the desert near a U.S. base.
A spokesman for U.S forces said the military has not seen the CD and had no comment.
Correspondent Jonathan Finer and special correspondents Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad, Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Hassan Shammari in Adhaim contributed to this report.
