Rifts emerge in Iraq govt after "bomb plot" foiled

BAGHDAD, Oct 1 (Reuters) Sunni and Shi'ite leaders in Iraq clashed publicly today over a US allegation that a bodyguard for a top Sunni politician may have plotted an al Qaeda suicide attack on the vast Green Zone government compound.

Rifts between parties in the four-month-old unity government broke the surface as data indicated sectarian violence may have claimed a record number of victims last month and a new mass kidnap saw 26 meat factory workers seized by gunmen in Baghdad.

Iraq's national security adviser said security forces were closing in on the al Qaeda leader in Iraq who took over from the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June. But the US ambassador said the main threat to Iraq was now from general sectarian violence.

As Baghdad returned to nervous normality after a 24-hour curfew imposed to avert the suicide bomb threat, a leading parliamentary supporter of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr accused the government of being ''infiltrated by terrorists''.

He was responding to the arrest on Friday of a bodyguard to Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the Sunni Accordance Front bloc. The US military said the man may have been plotting a major al Qaeda suicide attack on the parliament and government complex.

Bahaa al-Araji, prominent in the Shi'ite Alliance bloc of which Sadr is part, demanded that Alliance Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki reshuffle his cabinet to improve security. He hinted that Shi'ite leaders no longer trusted Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, who is in charge of security issues.

That drew a sharp response from allies of Dulaimi: ''All this talk about car bombs and so on in Adnan Dulaimi's house is fabricated,'' the Accordance Front's Hussein al-Falluji said.

''It seems there's some kind of political pressure from some people in the Alliance and the timing of this issue was calculated in advance to affect his standing,'' he told Reuters.

An ally of Maliki said the premier was sticking to a plan to reshuffle his cabinet and expected to do so this month: ''There is strong support for change ... from the Alliance,'' he said.

''The prime minister is strong but his cabinet is weak.'' DELICATE BALANCE Among those named as possible targets for a reshuffle have been supporters of Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia followers are blamed for much sectarian violence by US and some Iraqi officials. Some Sadr supporters say they would be better off in opposition.

Cajoled under US pressure following a December election to form a government involving Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish parties in parliament, Maliki faces a delicate job in adjusting the balance of his cabinet just four months after establishing it.

Partial statistics released by the Health and Interior Ministries indicated that the number of civilians killed in September leapt by over 40 percent to a record high. Though not complete, the series of data is an early indicator of trends.

It showed 1,089 civilians died violently, up from 769 in August and more than the record of 1,065 in July. The United Nations, which adds Health Ministry data to figures from Baghdad morgue, estimates that over 100 people are dying every day.

National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie played a video at a news conference that he said showed al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, rigging up a car bomb near Baghdad.

''I tell him 'Your days are numbered','' Rubaie said, adding that security forces were closing in. ''We are very close.'' Masri, an Egyptian known also as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, took over when Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June. A man resembling him was seen unrolling electric wire inside a car.

The US envoy to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said al Qaeda was no longer the main threat to stability in Iraq: ''The importance of the sectarian violence has increased while ... the al Qaeda terrorists have weakened,'' he told CNN.

However, with President George W Bush's Republicans under pressure in congressional elections next month, he warned against a hasty withdrawal of the 140,000 US troops. That, he said, could afford al Qaeda a new base from which to operate.

Just west of Baghdad, in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, a car bomb killed four people and wounded six in a busy vegetable market, police said. In the same region, two US soldiers were shot dead on yesterday, the military said in a statement.

REUTERS SY PM2235