Forces launch Iraq crackdown, arrest 100

BAGHDAD -- US and Iraqi troops swept through a western Baghdad neighborhood yesterday, arresting about 100 suspected insurgents in a fresh crackdown near the city's airport. A leading Sunni hard-line cleric condemned kidnappings, as police searched for a top Egyptian diplomat seized over the weekend.

But in a sign of political progress, a Sunni Arab group called on Sunnis to take part in future elections. Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 vote, which went overwhelmingly to Shi'ites -- an outcome that boosted the Sunni-led insurgency by convincing many Sunnis they would be marginalized in the new Iraq.

President Bush said the insurgents in Iraq will not stop democracy in that country and US forces will stay ''until the fight is won." ''Terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom," Bush said in a speech in West Virginia marking Independence Day.

Underscoring the challenges in Iraq, gunmen seized eight Iraqis in a town on the edge of the capital as they drove to work yesterday at a US base in Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, said police Colonel Modhafar al-Majmaie.

The sweep through western Baghdad began before dawn yesterday and was aimed at insurgent safe houses near Baghdad International Airport, the US military said. US officials said foreign fighters, including Egyptians, were among the 100 suspected insurgents arrested by US and Iraqi forces.

''The success of the Iraqi army demonstrates their level of training and high commitment to rid Iraq of terrorists," said Colonel Kenneth Roberts in a statement.

In Cairo, the family of the kidnapped Egyptian envoy, Ihab al-Sherif, said they had received no message from the kidnappers. Witnesses said the kidnappers accused Sherif of being an ''American spy" and shoved him into the trunk of a car after he stopped at a shop to buy a newspaper. Egypt announced last month that it would become the first Arab country to post an ambassador to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

''This kidnapping is an attempt to block the way for Arab diplomatic acceptance," said Dr. Abbas al-Bayati, a member of the parliament's Foreign Relations Committee. Bayati said the abduction was ''intended to isolate Iraq from the rest of the world."

In what may be a hopeful sign, a hard-line Sunni Arab cleric, Harith al-Dhari, condemned all kidnappings, calling them ''a bad phenomenon that emerged after the occupation of Iraq by America and its allies." Dhari heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have contacts with some insurgent groups. Sunni Arabs are estimated to make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.

Elsewhere, a car bomb yesterday killed two civilians in western Baghdad, police said. In separate attacks in Mosul, gunmen killed a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Party's Mosul branch and a bodyguard of the provincial Nineveh governor, officials said. In Tal Afar, about 30 miles west of Mosul, gunmen assassinated a council member, Abdul Kareem Suleiman, officials said.

Political efforts to encourage Sunni extremists to join in the building of a new Iraq received a boost yesterday when Dr. Adnan Al-Dulami, spokesman of the General Conference for Sunnis in Iraq, called on Sunnis ''to organize themselves to take part in the coming elections and to start to register their names at the offices of the Electoral Commission."