MIDDLE EAST: A suicide car bomber hit one of Iraq's biggest Shia Muslim parties running in elections next month, killing 13 people but missing its leader - hours before the most prominent Sunni party withdrew from the historic poll.
The bomb exploded outside the Baghdad head office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party set up in exile in Iran to oppose Saddam Hussein and one of the strongest groups contesting the January 30th election.
In a move threatened for weeks, the Iraqi Islamic Party said it was withdrawing from the parliamentary poll because violence in Sunni areas meant it would not be for fair to the Sunni minority which dominated the country under Saddam.
Though many Sunnis want to vote, many are afraid to and the party's decision revives debate on how Washington and its Iraqi allies can rescue the sectarian balance, and legitimacy, of the resulting assembly if Sunni Arabs stay at home on polling day.
Victims of the bombing, in which police said about 50 people were wounded, included several receptionists and guards at SCIRI's headquarters. None of the party leadership was hurt.
The office is also home to party leader Mr Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who was there at the time. He called it an assassination attempt but said SCIRI's thousands-strong militia would not retaliate.
"We have chosen the path of non-violence and we will stick to it," he told Reuters. "The only ideology these people know is terror. We laid down our arms in favour of pluralism. If we wanted violence we would have responded a long time ago."
The SCIRI leader blamed the attack on a Sunni insurgent alliance of former Saddam loyalists and Islamists. Iraqi Islamic Party leader Mr Hamid condemned the bombing as an attempt to divide Shias and Sunnis. Mr Hakim, who spent two decades in Iranian exile, heads a coalition that is expected to do well in the election, and almost certainly put the 60-per cent Shia majority in power after marginalisation under Saddam and before him.
SCIRI is part of the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition formed under the auspices of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to stand in the election. Mr Hakim heads its 228-strong electoral list.
Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, has issued a religious edict obliging Shias to vote in the poll, a move that is likely to boost turnout and favour Shia parties.
That has led to concerns among Iraq's 20 per cent Sunni Arab minority that they will be marginalised at the ballot box, particularly since most of the violence sweeping the country is in Sunni Arab areas to the north and west of Baghdad.
Last month, Sunni Arab groups, including the Iraqi Islamic Party, called for the poll to be delayed by up to six months, arguing that there was no way it could be free and fair amid the mayhem. The Electoral Commission rejected that request. The commission has also dismissed a suggestion, attributed to US officials and floated in the New York Times last Sunday, that Sunnis might be given extra seats if the vote is skewed.
But Washington, which has a reinforced army of 150,000 in Iraq for the election, is clearly working hard behind the scenes to ensure a vote that would produce the kind of legitimate government that can provide its forces with an exit strategy. - (Reuters)