0
BAGHDAD, May 17: A suicide car bomber killed the head of Iraq's Governing Council on Monday, increasing fears that instability will make a new Iraqi government unable to function when US occupiers hand it power in six weeks.
The killing of Izzedin Salim dealt another major blow to the US-led coalition, battling a Shia insurgency and a growing scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Salim, a Shia who edited several newspapers, was in the last car of a council convoy waiting to enter the "Green Zone" coalition headquarters when the bomb exploded at a checkpoint in central Baghdad, killing six people.
Governing Council members were clearly among the targets of increased insurgency in Iraq, said Mahmoud Othman, who sits on the US-backed council. "If the security situation stays as it is, the sovereign government will be weak because the government won't be able to function properly," he said, referring to the formal handover of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30.
But officials said the violence would not derail political preparations for the handover. And in a sign of parallel military moves, the United States plans to shift about 4,000 US troops from South Korea to Iraq, the Seoul government said on Monday.
OTHER COUNCILLORS: Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati said the other councillors near the checkpoint at the time escaped unharmed. "They managed to get through the checkpoint before the explosion. Salim was still waiting to enter," Bayati said.
The second suicide car bomb attack on a Green Zone checkpoint this month may have been aimed at the 25-member council gathering for a meeting. More than a dozen vehicles were destroyed, including minibuses from which doctors wearing masks and rubber gloves pulled burnt bodies.
"There were a lot of cars and people on foot standing there, and then this massive explosion," said Raad Mukhlis, a security guard at a nearby residential compound. "I saw body parts and martyrs everywhere."
A group led by top Al Qaeda figure Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suspected of beheading US hostage Nick Berg this month, claimed responsibility for the previous car bomb on May 6.
"This will strengthen our resolve to continue the political process," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said in Jordan. "This will not derail the process... This will not frighten us."
PRESSURE: Security concerns and outrage at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at a jail west of Baghdad have piled the pressure on the US-led occupiers and threatened President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in November.
His poll ratings have slipped as the US military death toll has risen. At least 571 Americans have been killed in action since the launch of the operation that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April last year.
The Bush administration insists abuse in Abu Ghraib prison, shown in images published around the world, was confined to low-level guards, though the Red Cross said it was systematic.
The latest allegations came from the New Yorker magazine, which said abuses resulted from a secret plan approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for tougher interrogation methods in the US "war on terror".
Citing current and former US intelligence officials, the report said tougher questioning was part of a plan giving prior approval to kill, capture or interrogate terrorist leaders. The Bush administration derided the report and the Pentagon said the abuses had not been sanctioned.
REAL POWER: Washington is being pressed by allies inside and outside Iraq for a handover of real power when the interim government is installed to steer the country to elections in January.
Italy, with the third largest troop contingent, has been prominent in saying Iraqis must have a real say in military affairs, but Washington insists US commanders will call the shots. Britain said it planned to step up training of Iraqi forces to allow its own military to leave as soon as feasible. -Reuters
