Edward Wong, New York Times - Thursday, June 9, 2005

Baghdad -- The rift between Iraq's government and disgruntled Sunni Arabs widened further on Wednesday as Iraq's leaders came out in support of sectarian militias that Sunnis fear could be used against them. It was the first time the new government had publicly backed armed sectarian groups, and it was an implicit rebuke to U.S. officials, who repeatedly have asked that the government disband all militias in the country. Many Iraqi militias are formed along sectarian lines, including the Kurdish peshmerga and an Iranian-trained Shiite militia that Sunni leaders have blamed for attacks against them.

The remarks supporting the militias were made at a news conference that was attended by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite Arab; President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and a militia leader himself; and Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite political party that created the Shiite militia, known as the Badr organization. The briefing was held to mark the militia's second anniversary.

The joint appearance of Talabani and the Shiite leaders suggested that Shiite and Kurdish leaders had reached an understanding that their respective militias should continue to exist.

In Washington, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said Wednesday that U.S. officials no longer play a role in determining the policy on militias.

"I have to emphasize this is an Iraqi issue that they will decide and that they will deal with," he told reporters. "But we will continue to work closely with them in the training of Iraqi forces."

While Iraqi officials squabbled in the capital, the Sunni-led insurgency ground on.

The U.S. military said four soldiers had been killed in various attacks in northern Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday. There were also sketchy but unconfirmed reports of the kidnapping of 22 Shiite soldiers in the rebellious western desert region of the country.

A car bomb exploded in a line of drivers outside a gas station in the city of Baquba, killing three people and wounding one, an Interior Ministry official said. Two bodyguards of a National Assembly member were shot dead in Baghdad, while a police officer was killed in the capital, and another was assassinated in Mosul, the official said.

The Badr organization recently has become a target of some Sunni Arab leaders, who have blamed it for the killings of prominent Sunni clerics and others. Among the group's harshest critics is Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

From the time the Badr militia entered Iraq from Iran during the American- led invasion, Sunnis have blamed Badr fighters for assassinations across the country, especially the killings of former Baath Party officials.

The two main Kurdish parties together have the strongest militia in the country, a force of 100,000 fighters known as the peshmerga, or "those who face death." In negotiations with the Shiites to assemble the current government, Kurdish leaders argued vehemently that the Kurds, as part of their right to broad autonomy, must be allowed to keep the peshmerga intact.

"You and the peshmerga are wanted and are important to fulfilling this sacred task, to establishing a democratic, federal and independent Iraq," Talabani said, speaking of the Badr organization, which numbers in the tens of thousands.

Iraqi officials say the militias will be placed under the nominal control of the Defense and Interior ministries. Kurdish leaders have consistently made clear, however, that the peshmerga will remain under the command of the Kurdish regional government and, for all practical purposes, will be independent of the central government.

The Badr organization, in one important way, has its own guarantee that it will remain intact, because the new interior minister, Bayan Baqir Jabr, is a former Badr officer.

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