Suicide bomb shatters peace in Kurdish area

IRAQ:The suicide lorry bombing yesterday in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil is the first attack in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region since early 2004.

The operation, which killed 14 people and wounded 80, is believed to have been carried out by two fundamentalist groups, the Sunni Arab Ansar al-Sunnah and the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam, which has ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Analysts suggest the ministry of interior and security headquarters at Irbil were targeted because Kurdish units of the Iraqi army are taking part in the pacification campaign in Baghdad and Kurdish militiamen have been cleansing Arabs and Turkomen from the city of Kirkuk, capital of the disputed oil-rich province.

The Kurds want to annex the province to their region over the objections of Arab and Turkomen inhabitants.

Al-Qaeda or affiliates are also blamed for Tuesday's bloody bombing in the southern Shia holy city of Kufa, which had a similar number of victims.

The groups who mounted these attacks wanted to show that in spite of tight security by the Kurdish peshmerga militia in Irbil and the Mehdi army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Kufa, his home and political base, the bombers could reach their targets.

By shaming these paramilitary formations, the bombers are seeking to undermine communal confidence in their ability to protect Kurds and Shias, prompt militiamen to wreak vengeance against Sunnis and propel Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Since US and Iraqi forces began the pacification campaign in Baghdad in mid-February the incidence of bombings has risen elsewhere in the country. While sectarian murders in the capital fell initially, the rate has risen to previous levels in the past few weeks.

On the political front, after meetings with leading government figures, vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi has adopted a wait- and-see attitude towards repeated promises to amend the constitution. On Monday Mr al-Hashimi, head of the Islamic party and senior Sunni in the regime, threatened to pull his faction out of the coalition by May 15th if amendments were not made to the document.

Sunnis agreed to take part in the October 2005 referendum on the constitution if certain provisions were changed to their liking once an elected cabinet was formed in early 2006. However, governments under Shia fundamentalist prime ministers Ibrahim Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki have not honoured this pledge or carried out other promised reforms.

Mr al-Hashimi insists on abrogation of the provision permitting Shias to form an autonomous Shia region in the south comparable to the Kurdish region in the north. Sunnis fear that this provision could lead to the division of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shia statelets and result in the dissolution of the country.

Mr al-Hashimi said he had turned down an invitation to the White House until the US exerted pressure on the Maliki government to deliver Sunni demands.

Withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic party, with 44 members, could prompt a pull-out by the secular Iraqi National Party, led by Ayad al-Allawi, with 25 seats, and the Sunni National Dialogue Front, headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, with 11.

Meanwhile, US vice-president Dick Cheney yesterday said Iraq remained a dangerous place, a point underscored by a thunderous explosion that rattled windows in the US embassy where he spent most of the day during a surprise visit to Baghdad.

After talks with Iraqi military and political officials, Mr Cheney said Iraq's leaders seemed to have a better sense now that they needed to do more to reconcile sectarian and political differences. - (Additional reporting PA)