Conference aimed at Sunnis leave some feeling alienated

BAGHDAD -- Several hundred Sunni Muslims from Iraq's angriest and most violent areas traveled yesterday to Baghdad to join the political process they've so far shunned, responding to calls for Sunnis to help draft the country's all-important new constitution.

Yet some felt more alienated than ever from Iraq's increasingly polarized political scene when they found the meeting was led by a Shi'ite official who enthusiastically backs the state policies they most despise, from purging Ba'ath Party members to last year's invasion of Fallujah.

The conference kicked off a crucial effort to draw Sunnis into writing the constitution, one of the most urgent tasks facing the new government as it seeks to win over disaffected Sunnis who fuel the insurgency.

Mistrust on both sides was on display when the conference broke for lunch and a phalanx of guards, machine guns bristling, whisked away the organizer, National Security Adviser Mowaffak Rubaie -- apparently deeming it unsafe for him to gladhand a room full of tribal leaders from unruly cities like Mosul, Ramadi, and Samarra.

Several blocks from the meeting at the Babylon Hotel, a car bomb exploded in a usually peaceful shopping district, killing at least six Iraqi passersby. According to the Associated Press, at least 17 other Iraqis, including eight soldiers hit by a suicide truck bomber south of Baghdad, were killed yesterday in several attacks around the country. A British soldier also was killed.

The day's high toll was a reminder that the effort to involve a broad swath of Iraqi society in drafting the charter faces security challenges as well as political ones.

Sunnis at the conference said they had no choice but to give such meetings a chance, despite a growing conviction that they will be shut out of the newly elected government. Still, their willingness to show up suggested they saw a potential benefit in the political process.

''We Sunnis will force them to listen to us," said Moustafa Ali, leader of a human rights organization in Mosul.

The 275-member National Assembly, which is in charge of drafting the constitution, is dominated by Kurds and Shi'ite Arabs, ethnic groups that were disenfranchised under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime. Sunnis largely boycotted the elections or were kept from the polls by insurgent violence and intimidation.

Their feeling of alienation deepened during the three months of political horsetrading it took for the winners to settle on the new Cabinet. Even now, several posts are filled by acting ministers, and one of the ongoing tussles is over which Sunni should be appointed defense minster.

Qais al-Hayali, a lawyer, university professor, and member of an Islamic organization in Mosul, said he was disappointed to learn that the conference, billed as an event of the Iraqi Institute for Peace, was organized by Rubaie.

''This conference will just end up representing the government point of view," he said. ''They won't listen to us. It's very frustrating, frankly."

But, he said, ''We have to try."

That it fell to Rubaie, a Shi'ite, to call a Sunni conference is a symptom of how hard it has been to find leaders to represent the fractious Sunni minority -- and an illustration of the twists and turns of politics in a country where there's little tradition of grass-roots organizing.

Rubaie's aides said he launched the Institute for Peace as a vehicle for outreach to disaffected groups in Iraq, ranging from the Sunnis to poor, urban Shi'ite followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

They said it was a personal effort, not in Rubaie's capacity as national security adviser. But they also said that the conference would produce Sunni representatives to participate in the constitution drafting process, suggesting he would use his clout to get them heard.

Rubaie urged the Sunnis to select a group of seven representatives, who would not necessarily get seats on the committee writing the constitution. Instead, they would be introduced to the committee as go-betweens who could ferry concerns between the committee and the four restive Sunni provinces.

Under Iraq's transitional administrative law, if a majority of voters in any three provinces reject the constitution draft, it is invalid.

The meeting did yield some unusual dialogue, with Rubaie and members of his institute visibly making an effort to see things from the Sunni point of view.

Rubaie, a longtime member of a Shi'ite Islamist party, urged the Sunnis to consider whether having a constitution based on Islamic law would threaten members of Iraq's religious minorities -- implicitly also acknowledging that Sunnis might be anxious about how a Shi'ite government might interpret religious law.

A close ally of the United States, he also insisted, ''We don't need any influence from foreigners to interfere in writing the constitution. We can only get advice from the United Nations."

Hayali, the lawyer, said he came mainly to register his strong conviction that Iraq's marriage and family law be based strictly on the Koran. He wants to preserve laws that stipulate that Muslim daughters inherit half the share that sons do; and fend off a movement among some parliament members to abolish polygamy.

''The most important thing is that we hold onto our principles and traditions," he said.

In those goals, he shares much with Rubaie's political party, but he vehemently disagrees about the fate of nearly 140,000 US troops still in the country. The Shi'ite alliance that dominated in the elections wants US troops to stay until Iraqi security forces can stand alone; Hayali, who said US troops shot and killed his father and brother last year, said he wants a timetable for their withdrawal.

There were many reminders during the conference of how far apart the two sides are. One man advocated giving amnesty to Iraqis involved in the insurgency and allowing them to be considered ''political opposition" -- an idea that Rubaie's party has strongly opposed.

Yet one woman whose relative's shop was damaged in yesterday's car bomb suggested, in her anguish, that the most crucial division in the country is between Iraqis arguing over the post-Hussein future and those who never wanted him gone.

''These are Saddam's group," the woman, who out of fear would identify herself only as Aida, said outside her nephew's charred shop. ''They are taking revenge from people because we clapped our hands when Saddam's statues fell down."

Anne Barnard can be reached at abarnard@globe.com. Globe correspondent Asmaa Waguih contributed to this story.