BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (AFP) -
21h28
- Arab
League chief Amr Mussa made two landmark visits in Iraq Saturday to
raise support for a proposed national reconciliation conference, while
the toll of US deaths grew to nearly 2,000.
Mussa,
on his first trip to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003,
said he had won crucial backing from Shiite spiritual leader Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for a planned attempt to reconcile Iraq's
divided communities.
The
head of the 22-member Arab League then flew to the Kurdish city of
Arbil in northern Iraq for an historic visit with regional president
Massoud Barzani that marked Arab League recognition of the Kurdish
autonomous region.
"We
have always understood the Kurdish people's ambitions," Mussa told a
press conference in Arbil. He planned to spend the night among the
Kurds and attend a session of their regional parliament on Sunday.
Mussa
had previously met with the preeminent Sunni religious body, the
Committee of Muslim Scholars, and several members of the government in
Baghdad.
Shiite
radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr rejected Mussa's overtures, however,
continuing to insist the League clearly condemn insurgent attacks
before he would talk with the pan-Arab body, which wants to hold a
preparatory conference in Cairo on November 15 ahead of full talks in
Iraq.
Meanwhile, the
US military announced that four soldiers had died Friday in various
attacks, bringing the overall toll since the US-led invasion of March
2003 to 1,991 according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
Coalition
forces killed 20 people suspected of links to Iraq's most wanted man,
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his Al-Qaeda movement during raids on
suspected safe houses near the Syrian border, the US military said.
Ten
Iraqis, including seven members of Iraqi security forces, were killed
in various other attacks in the country, security sources said.
In
Baghdad, Iraqi electoral officials released partial results of last
week's vote on a draft constitution, while counting continued for the
last five provinces.
Voters
in only one province have rejected the draft charter by a potentially
blocking two-thirds majority, according to the figures, but two
provinces with large Sunni Arab populations, among whom opposition to
the text runs high, are among those that have yet to return their
results.
Under rules
for the October 15 referendum, the constitution fails if it is rejected
by a two-thirds majority in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces, though
that still appeared unlikely.
In Salaheddin province, based on Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 81.5 percent of voters rejected the text.
The
commission said the remaining five provinces -- Al-Anbar, Arbil, Babel,
Basra and Nineveh -- would release their results in the next few days.
Tribal
leaders meanwhile blamed forces within the government for the murder of
one of the defence lawyers in the trial of ousted president Saddam
Hussein and seven co-defendants.
Sadun
Janabi, attorney for Awad Hamad al-Bandar al-Sadun, a former deputy
head of Saddam's office, was seized in his office late Thursday by
gunmen wearing police and army uniforms.
"We
have proof coming from the interior ministry showing that those who
perpetrated the assassination are interior ministry members," one of
the sheikhs, Hamid Faraj al-Janabi, told AFP.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch warned that Janabi's murder
threatened "to discourage lawyers from vigorously representing
defendants at the court, further undermining the defendants' right to a
fair trial".
But a
senior interior ministry official told AFP: "The ministry is ready to
ensure without conditions the protection of any lawyer or other person"
connected with the trial.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari rejected calls from defence counsel for the trial to be moved abroad on security grounds.
"The
process is a purely Iraqi affair which should take place on the (Iraqi)
territory, it is out of the question to transfer it anywhere else,"
Jaafari said.
Sadun,
Saddam and their co-defendants all pleaded not guilty to charges of
crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiite villagers in mass
reprisals following a botched 1982 assassination attempt.
Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, a veteran opponent of the death penalty, said
he would not stand in the way of its use against Saddam, even though he
would not sign the warrant himself.
"I
will not sign, neither his sentence nor that of anybody else," Talabani
told the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, adding that they could
still be signed by his two vice presidents.
