AP,
BAGHDAD — Iraq's US administrator suggested yesterday that he would block any move by Iraqi leaders to make Islamic law the backbone of an interim constitution. And in new violence, roadside bombs killed three more American soldiers.
The US military also said yesterday that gunmen killed an American Baptist minister from Rhode Island, and wounded two other New England pastors and one from New York in a weekend ambush south of the capital.
A grenade exploded yesterday in an elementary school playground in Baghdad, killing a child and wounding four others. The children apparently triggered the explosive while playing, Iraqi police said.
During a visit to a women's center in Karbala, administrator L. Paul Bremer III said the current draft of the interim constitution, due to take effect at the end of this month, would make Islam the state religion and “a source of inspiration for the law,” but not the main source for that law.
However, Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council and a Sunni Muslim hard-liner, has proposed making Islamic law the “principal basis” of legislation.
Iraqi women's groups fear that could cost them the rights they hold under Iraq's longtime secular system, especially in such areas as divorce, child support, and inheritance.
Bremer was asked what would happen if Iraqi leaders wrote into the interim charter that Islamic sharia law is the principal basis of legislation. “Our position is clear,” Bremer said. “It can't be law until I sign it.”
Bremer must sign all measures passed by the 25-member council before they can become law. But Iraq's powerful Shi'ite clergy members want the interim constitution to be approved by an elected legislature. Under US plans, a permanent constitution would not be drawn up and voted on by the Iraqi people until 2005.
Under most interpretations of Islamic law, the right of women to seek divorce is strictly limited and they receive only half the inheritance of men. Islamic law also allows polygamy and marriage of girls at a younger age than does secular law.
Earlier this month, 45 members of the US House of Representatives signed a letter to President Bush urging him to preserve women's rights in Iraq.
But US leverage with the Iraqis will decline after the US-led coalition returns sovereignty to an Iraqi administration at the end of June.
The United States also hopes to hand over more responsibility for internal security to US-trained Iraqi forces, which could reduce American casualties as the US presidential election approaches.
In the latest attacks:
A US soldier from Task Force Iron Horse was killed and four were wounded in a roadside bombing yesterday in Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Two Iraqis were arrested, one with a cellphone that may have been used to detonate the bomb, said Master Sergeant Robert Cargie, a spokesman in Tikrit.
A soldier from the First Armored Division was killed and another injured from a bomb blast in the center of Baghdad.
In Tall Afar in northern Iraq, a roadside bomb killed one soldier and injured another. According to a US military statement issued today, the soldiers were traveling in a convoy when the bomb exploded.
The latest deaths bring to 541 the number of US service members who have died since the United States launched the Iraq war last March. Most have died since Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
In the ambush Saturday, gunmen in a sedan opened fire on a taxi carrying Americans from a Baptist religious group from the site of the ancient city of Babylon to Baghdad, the US command said.
The Rev. John Kelley, 48, of Rhode Island, was killed and three Baptist ministers — from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York — were wounded, according to a spokesman for Kelley's family.
The spokesman, Roland Vukic, said Kelley and about 10 other pastors from the New England area left Feb. 6 to help start a church in Baghdad.
Police, meanwhile, arrested five Iraqis suspected in the assassination of Aquila al-Hashimi, a member of the Governing Council who was gunned down Sept. 20 as she left her Baghdad home, the Interior Ministry said.
The men were arrested 10 days ago in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of the capital, Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim said.
They were arrested for allegedly using drugs, but police have “indications” they may have been involved in Hashimi's slaying, he said. Police were still investigating.
Hashimi was the highest-ranking official in the interim Iraqi administration to be killed in the persistent violence in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Attacks against the US-led occupation force have continued unabated despite the capture of Hussein on Dec. 13 and the arrest of numerous people whom the American military has identified as key figures behind the insurgency.
US officials are divided about whether Iraqis or foreign fighters are responsible for recent attacks, including last weekend's bold daytime assault against police and civil defense compounds in Fallujah in which at least 25 people were killed.
But yesterday, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief, said it seemed all the attackers wounded or killed were Iraqis, despite initial reports that foreigners were involved.
