Sunnis want role in political process

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sunni Muslim political and religious leaders who led a boycott of Sunday's Iraqi national election are now signaling a desire to engage in the political process.

The new stance may represent a turning point in efforts to involve Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the country during Saddam Hussein's regime and whose opposition to the new political order has fueled the violent insurgency and threatened prolonged instability.

Influential parties and groups that boycotted the national assembly election quietly have begun negotiations to play a role in writing Iraq's permanent constitution.

After Friday prayers at Baghdad's Umm Qura mosque, headquarters of the hard-line Muslim Scholars' Association, a government official was permitted to issue a call for Sunni participation in future electoral rounds.

"We ask you to participate in the next elections," said Adnan Mohammed Salman, a spokesman for the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which oversees the country's mosques. "We must prepare and unite our ranks."

By allowing such a statement to be issued from the mosque, Sunni leaders apparently are acknowledging that the best way to protect their community's interests is through participation in the political process.

Shiite Muslims make up the majority of Iraq's population, but were oppressed for decades under Saddam. Their leaders encouraged them to vote, leading to a high turnout, and the top Shiite slate, the United Iraqi Alliance, is said to be ahead in early returns.

But Sunni Arabs, having lost their favored position with Saddam's ouster, feel threatened by the rising ambitions of the Shiite Arabs and the Kurds, an ethnic minority concentrated in the country's north.

Sunnis, Salman said, had "participated in the building and the defending of our beloved country. There is no power that can erase us or our role in this country."

After leading the Friday prayers, the imam at Umm Qurra, Sheik Ahmed Abdel Ghafour, called journalists back into the mosque to hear Salman, standing silently at his side has he delivered his message. Ghafour did not comment on the statement.

After more than a year of implacable opposition to the interim Iraqi government, groups like the Muslim Scholars' Association tread carefully to avoid alienating supporters by appearing to reverse course. The association appears to be cultivating a middle ground, said other Sunni politicians, by developing an arms'-length relationship with the new government, and trying to secure a role in the writing of the constitution, a task given to the national assembly.

The transitional parliament also will form a caretaker government that will rule until the permanent constitution is written and ratified in a national referendum. A new round of elections, scheduled for December, will choose a more lasting Iraqi government.

Almost immediately after Sunday's election, the MSA criticized the vote as illegitimate because of low turnout in many Sunni-dominated areas. Yet the association "probably will play a role in writing the constitution," said Minister of Industry Hachim Hassani, a prominent Sunni who broke with the Iraqi Islamic Party when it withdrew from the government in protest over the assault on Fallujah last year.

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"They said this government is not totally legitimate, but they'll accept it," Hassani said. "They can deal with this government, and that's good enough for now."

Preliminary figures showed that in the Sunni-dominated areas such as Al Anbar province, which has been racked by insurgent violence, only about 17,000 of as many as 250,000 eligible voters took part in the election.

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Amid a general acknowledgment that Sunnis would not be fairly represented in the new assembly, negotiations are already under way to make up for that imbalance.

On Wednesday, ranking Sunni and Shiite politicians met in the office of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to discuss the issue. They included representatives of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, as well as prominent Sunni politicians such as Hassani, interim President Ghazi Ajil Yawer and the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Mohsen Abdel Hamid.

Hassani said the group agreed in principle that representatives of the Iraqi Islamic Party and possibly the Muslim Scholars' Association should be included on the committee that will draft the constitution. Committee members will be selected by the national assembly, but don't have to be from among the lawmakers. As a result, opposition groups such as the MSA can get involved without endorsing the new government.

Other possible ways to include Sunnis have been floated in recent weeks, including granting them extra seats in the assembly or assigning specific government ministries to Sunni politicians. Hassani said such measures might prove impractical because the Iraqi Islamic Party wanted to maintain a distance from the new government to protect its opposition credentials.

"They think they'll lose their credibility," Hassani said. "They're playing it very smartly. I think they're planning for the next election."

The Iraqi Islamic Party has long held a more conciliatory position than the MSA. It supported the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam, who is Sunni, and participated in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and, for a short time, in the interim government. When it withdrew from the elections late last year, party leaders made it clear that they remained committed to the nascent Iraqi political process.

For now, party officials weren't committing to anything. A senior official said they were waiting to see what would be offered.

"Any proposal will be studied and considered, said Assistant General Secretary Iyad Samarrai. "We didn't withdraw from the political process. It's not necessary to be in the government or the assembly to be part of the process."

The scholars' association has taken a harder line. The influential group has long held that any election would be illegitimate as long as U.S. soldiers remained in Iraq.

Recently, the group softened its demands for a firm timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. But it was rejected by U.S. officials and many Iraqi politicians.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope that bringing the Sunni political and religious leadership on board will finally blunt the insurgency.

The future of the insurgency largely depends on pending political moves to alleviate the Sunnis' sense of alienation, said Samarrai, of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

Although a certain percentage of insurgents will never come around, he said, the majority could be coaxed into laying down their arms by an acceptable political solution.