Iraq hunts killers of Egypt envoy

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq urged fellow Arab and Muslim
states on Friday to send ambassadors to Baghdad in defiance of
attacks by al Qaeda insurgents, who killed Egypt’s kidnapped
envoy and have threatened other diplomats.

“The criminals wanted by this act to terrorise Arab and
Islamic countries and deter them from upgrading their
diplomatic missions in Iraq,” Iraq’s Foreign Ministry said.

“Arab and Islamic countries are asked to prove their
seriousness in combating terrorism and send their ambassadors
to Baghdad so they send the right message to the terrorists.”

Iraq’s president promised top security for diplomats and
Interior Minister Bayan Jabor, who has chided envoys for
traveling without protection, said Iraqi armed escorts were
always available.

Police were hunting the killers of Egyptian envoy Ihab el-
Sherif, a day after Cairo confirmed his death at the hands of
al Qaeda kidnappers. He had been snatched off a Baghdad street
on Saturday.

“Our investigations are continuing,” a senior Interior
Ministry official said. The Islamist militants posted a video
showing Sherif speaking but not his killing.

The Iraqi government has decribed the abduction and killing
of Sherif, as well as at least two other attacks on senior
diplomats in the capital this week, as part of attempts by
insurgents to isolate the new, U.S.-backed government.

Pakistan’s ambassador left the country after his motorcade
was shot up on Tuesday. The same day, the envoy from the Gulf
Arab state of Bahrain was shot in the hand as he drove to work.

Iraq had said last week that Egypt was planning to become
the first Arab state to have a full-ranking ambassador in
Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 — something
Cairo never confirmed. Opposition figures in Egypt said plans
to upgrade Sherif’s job had led to his death.

SECURITY OFFERED

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani dismissed suggestions that
the attacks on the diplomats in Baghdad would further
discourage the dispatch of emissaries from Arab capitals:

“It will have no effect,” he said late on Thursday during a
visit to the Shi’ite religious establishment in Najaf.

“Two countries, Syria and Jordan, have asked to reopen
their embassies in Iraq. For our part, we will take strict
security precautions to protect embassies and diplomatic
residences.”

Though publicly critical of Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgency,
most Arab leaders are Sunnis and view with some mistrust the
U.S.-sponsored new government in Baghdad, run by Shi’ites from
Iraq’s long oppressed majority community and by non-Arab Kurds.

Iraq’s defense minister signed a military cooperation
agreement with Tehran on Thursday, a move that is unlikely to
have helped dispel widespread Arab disquiet about the
government’s sectarian ties to Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran.

Washington, at daggers drawn with Tehran, has not
commented.

A U.S. military official linked the campaign against
embassy staff to a crackdown by security forces on car bombings
that may have caused insurgents to adopt new tactics for a
time.

“If we come down hard on one kind of attack they shift to
something else,” he said. “A number of diplomats have been
attacked. Our impression is that will continue and we’ve got to
turn our attention to improving security.”

Already a number of attacks on highly sensitive targets
like Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic
compound and the city’s airport had been thwarted, he added:

“The enemy is looking for ways to keep this war going and
tear down the belief that the government can succeed.”

ACCUSATIONS

Iraq’s al Qaeda group, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi, announced Sherif’s death in a Web statement: “We al
Qaeda in Iraq announce that the judgment of God has been
implemented against the ambassador of the infidels … Oh enemy
of God, Ihab el-Sherif, this is your punishment in this life.”

The Egyptian presidency said Sherif “lost his life at the
hands of terrorism which trades in Islam.”

An Egyptian diplomatic source said Egypt had confirmation
of the killing “through multiple contacts” but had not received
decisive evidence and did not know where Sherif’s body might
be.

Egypt is one of the friendliest states in the region toward
the United States and was the first to make peace with Israel,
where Sherif had previously been Cairo’s top envoy.

Iraq’s interior minister made veiled accusations that
Sherif had been in contact with Iraqi insurgents, which had
cost him his life. Sherif’s ministry said his job was to meet
people from all sections of Iraqi society.

Sectarian tensions are evident across in Iraq and
especially in the capital, where daily killings are attributed
to ethnic and religious strife. Late on Thursday, the imam of a
Shi’ite mosque was shot dead in his car in the south of the
city.

(Additional reporting by Omar Anwar in Baghdad and Khaled
Farhan in Najaf)