Witness says Iraqi police watched sectarian kidnap

BAGHDAD, Nov 14 (Reuters) An Iraqi who said he saw dozens of people seized today from a Baghdad government building said police stood by as gunmen checked identity cards to sort Sunnis from Shi'ites and then drove off with Sunni men.

The civil servant who normally works at the Higher Education Ministry building but was out at a bank at the time of the raid said he returned to the building to see all the male employees lined up in a car park. Around 40 camouflaged pick-ups of the type used by police commandos were gathered at the building.

''They were checking identity cards in the car park. They picked only the Sunni employees. They even took the man who was just delivering tea,'' said the man, a Sunni himself who is well known to a Reuters employee but did not want to be identified for fear of retribution.

''They gathered them all in the pick-ups. At the same time, I saw two police patrols watching, doing nothing,'' said the witness, who works at the office of delegations and cultural relations at the Higher Education Ministry.

Higher Education Minister Abd Dhiab, a member of a Sunni Arab party in government, told Iraqiya state television he had asked the Interior Ministry and Defence Ministry to provide more protection for his staff some time ago because he had information that they were vulnerable to attack.

''As far as we know, this area is full of police and Defence Ministry checkpoints and we know police vehicles followed the kidnappers to a specific area and after that we don't know what happened,'' Dhiab said.

He said the gunmen, who were wearing police uniforms, claimed they were from the Interior Ministry.

That ministry, which is controlled by the majority Shi'ites, has repeatedly denied charges of links to Shi'ite militias blamed by Sunni Arabs and Washington for operating death squads and kidnapping cells.

REUTERS MS HT1552