Iraqi Shi'ite leader escapes bomb

A suicide car bomber hit one of Iraq's biggest Shi'ite Muslim parties running in elections next month, killing nine people but missing its leader, hours before the most prominent Sunni party withdrew from the historic poll.

The bomb exploded outside the Baghdad head office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party set up in exile in Iran to oppose Saddam Hussein and one of the strongest groups contesting the January 30 election.

In a move threatened for weeks, the Iraqi Islamic Party said it was withdrawing from the parliamentary poll because violence in Sunni areas meant it would not be fair to the minority which dominated the country under Saddam.

Though many Sunnis want to vote, many are afraid to and the party's decision revives debate on how Washington and its Iraqi allies can rescue the sectarian balance, and legitimacy, of the resulting assembly if Sunni Arabs stay at home on polling day.

"We are withdrawing," party leader Mohsen Abdel Hamid told a news conference. "We are not calling for a boycott, but we said we would take part only if certain conditions had been met and they have not," he said, 34 days before the vote.

The Electoral Commission said ballot forms were already being printed but that, if the withdrawal were formally confirmed, any votes for the party would be declared invalid.

Victims of the bomb, which a senior Interior Ministry source said killed nine people, fewer than earlier police estimates, and wounded over 60, included receptionists and guards at SCIRI's headquarters. None of the party leadership was hurt.

The office is also home to party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who was there at the time. He called it an assassination attempt but said SCIRI's thousands-strong militia would not retaliate.

"We have chosen the path of non-violence and we will stick to it," he told Reuters. "The only ideology these people know is terror. We laid down our arms in favour of pluralism. If we wanted violence we would have responded a long time ago."

The SCIRI leader blamed the attack on a Sunni insurgent alliance of former Saddam loyalists and Islamists.

Iraqi Islamic Party leader Hamid condemned the bombing as an attempt to divide Shi'ites and Sunnis. It came eight days after twin car bombs in the main Shi'ite holy cities.

Mr Hakim, who spent two decades in Iranian exile, heads a coalition that is expected to do well in the election, and almost certainly put the 60-per cent Shi'ite majority in power after marginalisation under Saddam and before him.

His brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the party's previous leader, was assassinated in a suicide car bomb attack outside a Shi'ite shrine in Najaf in August last year.

Yesterday's car bomb shook southern Baghdad in the early morning, sending thick clouds of dark smoke into the air.

SCIRI is part of the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition formed under the auspices of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to stand in the election. Mr Hakim heads its 228-strong electoral list.

Mr Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric, has issued a religious edict obliging Shi'ites to vote in the poll, a move that is likely to boost turnout and favour Shi'ite parties.