Allawi warns of civil war

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s interim prime minister warned Monday that insurgents are trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail elections, while thousands of mourners turned out for funerals in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala a day after car bombs killed 67 people.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents, blamed for Sunday’s bloody attacks, want to “create ethnic and religious tensions, problems and conflicts … to destroy the unity of this country.”

“These attacks are designed to stop the political process from taking place in Iraq,” Allawi told reporters. He added that his administration would not be deterred despite expecting more strikes before key Jan. 30 parliamentary elections – the first free vote in Iraq since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

Although members of his Cabinet have made similar warnings about the danger of a civil war, Allawi himself had regularly played down that possibility.

Political and religious leaders of the Shiite community also have discounted the threat of an armed conflict with Sunnis, instructing their followers not to react violently to attacks. These included a bombing in August 2003 that killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the main Shiite party – the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

In a new attack in Karbala on Monday, a bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, damaging nearby buildings but inflicting no casualties. Police said they arrested the attacker. In Najaf, police said they defused a bomb stashed in a car.

Shiite Muslims, who make up around 60 percent of Iraq’s people, have been strong supporters of the electoral process, which they expect to reverse the longtime domination of Iraq’s Sunni minority. The insurgency is believed to draw most of its support from Sunnis, who provided much of Saddam Hussein’s former Baath Party leadership.

Shiite officials and clerics blamed Sunnis for Sunday’s bombings, which caused the worst carnage in Iraq since July. The strikes appeared designed to cause heavy casualties, and provoke reprisals by Shiites against Sunnis.

The bombings – aimed at a funeral procession in Najaf and a packed bus station in Karbala – again highlighted the capability of the guerrillas to strike. Their attacks have undermined confidence in repeated claims by U.S. military commanders that the capture of the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah last month dealt a serious blow to the insurgency.

The head of Iraq’s electoral commission appealed to security forces to protect his officials after three were shot to death in a daylight attack Sunday by dozens of guerrillas in the heart of Baghdad. The ambush was the latest attack to target Iraqi officials working to organize the vote.

“We send an appeal to the Iraqi government and all the people to protect our employees,” Abdul Hussein Al-Hindawi said. “We have no real protection because we work everywhere in the country and have more than 6,000 employees.”

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan strongly condemned Sunday’s violence and called on Iraqis “to come together in a spirit of national reconciliation,” U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

“No cause can justify the killings of innocent civilians and the cold-blooded murder of election workers,” Eckhard said.

Allawi said Monday that a big factor in the strength of the insurgency was the dismantling of Iraq’s security forces after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam’s regime.

“What is happening is that we are facing an enemy heavily supported even in some cases with superior weapons,” he said. “We will have setbacks, we are having setbacks, but we are determined to continue the fight.”

Police and troops were nowhere to be seen Sunday while the gunmen conducted spot checks of cars and their occupants on Haifa Street, the capital’s main thoroughfare. It was only after the insurgents had fled after the slayings of the election workers that U.S. Apache helicopters appeared over the scene.

There have been fears the intimidation campaign aimed at electoral workers will not only hurt preparations for the ballot, but also could reduce voter turnout enough to bring the legitimacy of the election into question.

Iran’s supreme leader on Monday called the planned elections a sham, saying they were designed to help the United States keep control of Iraq’s oil wealth.