(Adds Interior Minister, Dari comments, edits)

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite-led government ordered the arrest of the country's most prominent Sunni cleric on Thursday on suspicion of terrorism, a move that could further raise sectarian tension amid a rash of kidnappings and killings.

A warrant under anti-terrorism laws was issued for Harith al-Dari, head of the Muslim Clerics Association and an outspoken defender of the once dominant Sunni minority's interests, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told state television.

He said he would seek foreign help to arrest Dari, who is in Jordan, a Sunni-ruled neighbour unlikely to hand him over.

"This is the government's policy against anyone who tries to foment division among Iraq's sects. The security services will pursue them," Bolani, a Shi'ite, said in a late-night interview.

He said it was the fruit of probes into militant groups. But government leaders were also incensed this week by comments Dari made on television that they said defended al Qaeda violence.

Dari dismissed the move as a "silly act" by a "bankrupt" government that would "bring down upon it the anger and curses of the Iraqi people". He told Reuters: "We see them doing such things to distract the Iraqi people from their crimes."

Many Sunnis, and increasingly anxious U.S. officials, say Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is failing to curb death squad violence by militias loyal to his fellow Shi'ites -- a charge compounded by a mass kidnap from a government ministry this week about which officials are still at odds on the fate of hostages.

There was no immediate comment from the United States. While frustrated by Dari's contempt for its occupation, it has seen his group as a potential partner in steering the disaffected minority, dominant under Saddam Hussein, away from insurgency.

With pressure mounting in the United States for 140,000 U.S. troops to be brought home, President George W. Bush is counting on Maliki to forge a national consensus in Iraq that can halt a slide into all-out civil war which could ignite the Middle East.

One prominent Sunni member of parliament, Alaa Mekki, said the move against Dari could hamper efforts to reach out to Sunnis: "This is a very wrong political decision," he told CNN.

Jordan, which has long rejected Iraqi arrest warrants for Saddam's daughter, is highly unlikely to extradite Dari.

His organisation, formed after the U.S. invasion of 2003, groups many of Iraq's Sunni clerical scholars.

REGIONAL RELATIONS

Though often controversial, Dari has cultivated influential relations abroad. He was received last month in Mecca by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, one of several Sunni-ruled Arab states concerned about the rising influence of Shi'ites and Iran. Iraq's ethnic Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, who is a Sunni Muslim, said this week Dari promoted "sectarian sedition" with the support of Arab countries, which he did not name.

The move to arrest him came on a day on which dozens of apparently Shi'ite bus passengers were feared kidnapped at fake security checkpoints in Sunni west Baghdad and government officials argued over whether civil servants seized by suspected Shi'ite militiamen on Tuesday had been tortured and killed.

Six missing minibuses were mostly taking Shi'ites across mainly Sunni west Baghdad when gunmen, some in uniform, pulled them over for bogus security checks, police sources said.

Fifteen people were grabbed from a city centre cafe after dark, police said. Nine were gunned down at a bakery, some of the at least 50 reported deaths which underline how little control government and U.S. forces have over the capital.

Demands are growing in Washington to start bringing troops home, and Maliki and U.S. commanders face a race against time to build Iraqi security forces capable of stifling the sectarian strife that is pushing Iraq towards civil war.

Fissures are also opening in the six-month-old unity government. The Sunni minister whose employees were abducted on Tuesday is boycotting the cabinet until they are found.

"There is no effective government," Higher Education Minister Abd Dhiab told the BBC, complaining of "anarchy".

Despite repeated insistence from Maliki's government spokesman that nearly all Dhiab's staff were free and unharmed, the minister told Reuters about 70 were missing and some of the others had been tortured, and others killed.

"I can't believe I'm alive," one man freed told Reuters, describing the kidnappers as "very organised and taking orders".

Interior Minister Bolani said five senior police officers who had been detained may have been involved.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ahmed Rasheed and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad and Firouz Sedarat in Dubai)

AlertNet news is provided by

Delicio.us  |   Digg  |   NewsVine  |   Reddit