By Richard A. Oppel Jr. The New York Times
[International Herald Tribune-MONDAY, MAY 16, 2005 (PARIS)]

BAGHDAD Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Iraq on Sunday to urge its new leaders to greatly increase the involvement of Sunni Arabs in writing the Iraqi constitution amid the growing alarm of American officials who fear that a chance to bring dispossessed Sunni Arabs into the fold is slipping away. And she issued a stern warning to neighboring Syria, accusing it of harboring Iraqi terrorists and "standing in the way of the Iraqi people's desire for peace."In meetings with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and top Kurdish leaders, Rice specifically cautioned that de-Baathification, the process of ridding the government and military of Sunni Baathists who had served under Saddam Hussein, must not go too far and should not impede the creation of an "inclusive" government, she said in a later interview.
 
And she made clear to the Iraqi leaders that the Bush administration had serious concerns that the parliamentary committee drafting the new constitution did not represent Sunni Arabs, who number only 2 out of 55 chosen for the committee.
 
The visit, the first by Rice to Iraq since a Thanksgiving 2003 trip with President George W. Bush, is the starkest and most dramatic sign yet that the Bush administration is worried that failure to give Sunnis a significantly larger role in crafting the country's new charter will poison much of the restive Sunni population against a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
 
The Sunni Arabs, who make up one-fifth of the population but were favored by Saddam and dominated the military and intelligence services under his rule, largely boycotted the January election and have only 17 lawmakers in the 275-member National Assembly. But failure to give them a larger role writing the constitution, American officials fear, will add to the Sunnis' deep feelings of disaffection and could add fuel to a Sunni-dominated insurgency that has killed more than 400 Iraqis in the past two weeks.
 
Arriving in the northern city of Irbil, Rice donned a flak jacket and flew by military helicopter to the mountaintop command post of the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani in Salahuddin. Later she flew on a C-17 military plane to Baghdad, where she met with Jaafari and most of his top ministers.
 
In an interview after those meetings, Rice drew a sharp distinction between what she described as promising efforts by Jaafari to include Sunnis in his new cabinet and the corresponding failure so far of Iraqi lawmakers to include Sunni Arabs in writing the new constitution.
 
"The government has done a very good job of including Sunnis in the government," she said, citing Sunnis appointed to be defense minister and minister of industry.
 
"But now it is about writing the constitution," she said. She added that she had cautioned Iraqi leaders about "concerns about the committee that was appointed and the Sunni representation on that committee."
 
She also said that she warned the Iraqi leaders that de-Baathification must be restrained. Many Shiite leaders, particularly the powerful Islamist party Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the deputy prime minister, Ahmad Chalabi, strongly favor exhaustive de-Baathification.
 
While there is a need for de-Baathification "that of course understands the need for justice," she said the process must "also respect the fact that there now needs to be an inclusive Iraqi process and an inclusive Iraqi government."
 
She also said she "most certainly did not try to suggest any mechanisms" to increase Sunni involvement in writing the constitution. But she said, "I think there are a lot of ideas on the table." American officials have encouraged the Iraqis to create subcommittees that would take over many of the duties of drafting the new constitution and then place more Sunnis on those panels. On Sunday, a top Shiite parliamentary leader, Ali al-Dabagh, said in an interview that lawmakers were moving to adopt a subcommittee system with more Sunnis involved.
 
Marines completed a seven-day offensive this weekend in the western Iraqi desert aimed at wiping out a sanctuary for Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters who used the remote region to smuggle in fighters, money, cars and weapons used to restock the insurgency in Baghdad, Mosul and other cities.
 
Rice said that during her meetings with the Iraqi leaders she heard "particular concerns about Syria, about the gathering of terrorist networks there and the transiting of those networks across the Syrian border."
 
"Syria is badly out of step in the region," she said. "It's standing in the way of the Iraqi people's desire for peace if it is willing to let its territory be used in this way."
 
Senior administration officials have been saying for several days that there was mounting concern in Washington about the political difficulties in forming an inclusive government process in Baghdad, and a top official said Sunday that Rice's trip was meant to underscore these concerns.
 
While the Baghdad government led by Jaafari is roughly representative of Iraq's ethnic and religious makeup, a senior State Department official said Sunday that Rice felt the constitutional assembly, with only two Sunni Arabs, was "more restrictive" and that this would create problems.
 
"There are several stages to the constitution-writing process, and one of her messages was that these stages can be more inclusive," said a State Department official.