Gunmen kidnap two Algerian envoys in Baghdad

Gunmen kidnapped two Algerian envoys in Baghdad yesterday, the latest in a series of guerilla strikes that have driven diplomats from the Iraqi capital.

The gunmen, who were in two cars, snatched Algerian mission chief Ali Billaroussi off the street outside a restaurant along with diplomatic attache Azzedine bin Fadi, police sources said.

"We deplore the kidnapping of diplomats accredited in Baghdad, all the more that Algeria has very good relations with the whole Iraqi people," Algeria's presidential representative Abdelaziz Belkhadem told Algerian state radio.

Earlier this month Egyptian envoy Ihab el-Sherif was kidnapped by al Qaeda's Iraq wing, which later said it had killed him and vowed more attacks on diplomats in Baghdad.

The Egyptian had been expected to become the first Arab diplomat in Baghdad with the full title of ambassador since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, an important symbolic milestone.

Two days after he was kidnapped, gunmen fired on cars carrying the envoys of Pakistan and Bahrain, triggering an exodus of diplomats. Some embassies scaled back their operations over security fears.

Iraq's US-backed government said the attacks were aimed at depriving it of international legitimacy, especially in the wider Arab world where nearly all countries are ruled by Sunnis seen as distrustful of Iraq's elected Shi'ite leaders.

Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari has blamed Saddam loyalists leading an Arab Sunni insurgency for much of the violence gripping Iraq, including attacks on diplomats. The Sunni Arab minority in Iraq were dominant under Saddam.

Saddam appeared before Iraq's war crimes tribunal yesterday to hear new accusations against him, according to a video tape broadcast by the Arabic satellite television station Al Arabiya.

The footage showed a tribunal official reading out accusations against Saddam relating to the treatment of the Faili Kurds, a Shi'ite minority among the mostly Sunni Muslim Kurdish population.

Saddam protested several times, interrupting the official.

"I am detained and this is a game... I am detained by the Iraqi government appointed by the Americans," he said, sitting across a table from judicial officials.

The Iraqi authorities and their US backers are hoping diplomacy and politics can defuse the insurgency by drawing restive Sunnis into the political process in Iraq and undermining their support from Arabs abroad.

But the insurgents have picked their targets carefully. On Tuesday, gunmen assassinated a Sunni member of the committee drawing up Iraq's new Constitution, placing new questions over whether the draft can be completed by an August 15 deadline.

Sunnis suspended their work on the committee in response.

Committee chief Humam Hamoudi said he expected the Sunnis' demands for better security could be met quickly resolving the boycott, and the draft would be ready early. But a spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue, the Sunni umbrella group whose committee representative Mujbil al-Sheikh Isa was killed, said it had not lifted its suspension and warned the authorities not to rush out a draft without its support.

At a news conference, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari urged Sunnis to take part in the drafting of the Constitution.

Seven Iraqis were killed and 11 were wounded in a suicide car bomb strike in Mahmudiya south of Baghdad yesterday, an Interior Ministry source said. Police said two Iraqi commandos were killed and 10 were wounded by a suicide car bomb strike on a checkpoint in the Dora neighbourhood of the capital.

A roadside bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers in Mahawil south of the capital, police said.

In Baquba north of Baghdad, police said militants had blown up a shrine holy to Shi'ites overnight, damaging its dome.

The Iraqi army said it had arrested 200 suspected insurgents in a two-day sweep near the city.