By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 3, 2006; A15
BAGHDAD, July 2 -- The largest Sunni Arab bloc in the Iraqi parliament said on Sunday it would boycott the fledgling legislature to protest the kidnapping of a colleague, at a time when the prime minister is pushing a reconciliation plan aimed at bringing religious sects together and lessening the daily violence.
The decision by the Sunni Accord Front, which holds 44 seats in the 275-member parliament, threatens to pull the legislature apart. The announcement came a day after legislator Tayseer Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards were abducted in broad daylight on a busy street in a predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad. One of the leaders of the Accord Front, Adnan Dulaimi, said the Sunni parliament members would not participate in the legislature until Mashhadani was released.
"This is outrageous and should be remedied by the government with the participation of American forces," said Dulaimi. "That she and her bodyguards would be kidnapped by criminal gangs is something that should shake Iraq."
Sunni legislators blamed the abduction on Shiite-led militias aligned with the majority political parties in Iraq. Some accused the Iraqi security forces, who were near the kidnapping site in the Shaab neighborhood, of standing by and allowing Mashhadani's convoy to be captured.
"The militias kidnapped Mashhadani, definitely," said Alaa Makky, a senior leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "Also, there were certain official checkpoints near this place. It raises many questions."
The decision to boycott parliament came on a day when Iraq's national security adviser issued a "most wanted" list of 41 insurgents including the wife and daughter of former president Saddam Hussein, along with many members of his Baath Party government. Mowaffak al-Rubaie said it took the Iraqi security forces nine months to compile the list, and he said they had "serious evidence on every single one of the people."
"They have killed our innocent people in their attempt to bring back Iraq to the era of dictatorship and sectarianism," he said.
Rubaie offered rewards of up to $10 million for information leading to the capture of those listed. The largest bounty was for Hussein's former deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri.
At numbers 16 and 17 on the list were Hussein's eldest daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, and his first wife, Sajida Khairallah Telfah, who are accused of funding insurgents. Hussein's daughter lives in Jordan, and Rubaie demanded that all neighboring countries harboring those on the list to turn them over to Iraqi authorities. But Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit told the country's official news agency on Sunday that Hussein's daughter was under the protection of the royal family as an asylum seeker.
Rubaie also announced that insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a U.S. airstrike last month, had been buried in a secret location in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported. U.S. military officials said they had turned over the remains of Zarqawi and Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, also killed in the attack, to the Iraqi government and declined to comment further.
The Bush administration said on Sunday that it had verified that the online audio message urging insurgents to keep fighting indeed came from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In the message, bin Laden expresses support for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the successor to Zarqawi as leader of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, and tells insurgents not to participate in negotiations with the government.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month called for Sunni Arab insurgent groups to lay down their arms and asked them to return to the political fold. On Saturday, a truck bomb killed at least 66 people in a busy market in the heart of a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, the deadliest attack since the government took power in May.
"The major factions have refused this initiative and are not interested in it," said Hussein Falluji, a Sunni lawmaker. "This reconciliation plan is only in the prime minister's mind. It was born dead."
The violence continued on Sunday. A mortar attack hit the Muhammad Bakir al-Hakeem Hospital in the Shula neighborhood of northern Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 16 others, said Col. Sami Hassan of the Interior Ministry.
Also, Iraqi patrols discovered 11 unidentified corpses floating in the Euphrates River between Hilla and Ramadi in western Iraq. The bodies, of men believed to be in their 20s and 30s, showed signs of torture and had gunshot wounds to the heads, Hassan said.
A car bomb targeting police exploded in the central Baghdad district of Karrada, killing two policemen and one civilian and wounding eight other people. Another car bomb near a Baghdad bus station killed three more people, police said.
A Shiite lawmaker survived an assassination attempt in the Mahmudiyah area south of Baghdad. The motorcade of parliament member Liqa al-Yaseen was attacked by gunmen, who abducted eight of her bodyguards, but she managed to escape, said Maj. Gen. Salim Khaiyon of the Interior Ministry.
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi, Naseer Nouri and K.I. Ibrahim contributed to this report.