Iraq Teens Trained As Suicide Bombers

The Iraqi military on Monday displayed a group of weeping teenagers who said they had been forced into training for suicide bombings by a Saudi militant in the last urban stronghold of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Four of the six boys were lined up for the media at police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, where they said they had been training for a month to start suicide operations in early June.

The United Nations and the Iraqi and U.S. militaries say they fear that al Qaeda in Iraq is increasingly trying to use youths in attacks to avoid the heightened security measures that have dislodged the group from Baghdad and surrounding areas.

The youths, three wearing track suits and one with a torn white T-shirt, began crying as they were led into the police station.

"The Saudi insurgent threatened to rape our mothers and sisters, destroy our houses and kill our fathers if we did not cooperate with him," one of the youths, who were not identified, told reporters in Mosul, where security forces are cracking down on al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents.

Iraqi soldiers acting on tips found the youths, who ranged in age from 14 to 18, in the basement of an abandoned house on Monday after the Saudi militant who was training them was killed in military operations last week, deputy Interior Minister Kamal Ali Hussein said.

In April, the U.N. said rising numbers of Iraqi youths have been recruited into militias and insurgent groups, including some serving as suicide bombers. It called them "silent victims of the continued violence." There have also been several recent suicide bombings by women.

The U.S. military released several videos in February seized from suspected al Qaeda in Iraq hideouts that showed militants training children who appeared as young as 10 to kidnap and kill. The U.S. military said at the time that al Qaeda in Iraq was teaching teenage boys how to build car bombs and go on suicide missions.

Children have also been used as decoys in Iraq.

Mosul is believed to be al Qaeda in Iraq's last urban base of operations. U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a crackdown this month in the city of nearly 2 million people 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The boys were found during a raid in the insurgent stronghold of Sumar, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in southeastern Mosul. Police declined to say what charges they could face pending a final investigation.

Kamal said they came from different social backgrounds, one the son of a female physician, another the son of a college professor and four who are member of poor vendors' families.

"They were trained how to carry out suicide attacks with explosive belts and a date was fixed for each one of them," Kamal said.

The U.S. military in northern Iraq said American forces were not involved and had no information about the arrests.

The Iraqi government is trying to assert control over the country with the Mosul offensive and two operations against Shiite extremists, in Baghdad's Sadr City district and the southern city of Basra.

American Casualty On Memorial Day

A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Monday in a roadside bombing in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad. The military announced that another soldier in Baghdad died due to non-combat related causes on Saturday. It did not elaborate.

The deaths raise to at least 4,082 the number of American service members who have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003.

Political Rows May Delay Elections

Iraqi politicians squabbled Monday over a provincial elections law and warned that differences over the bill are likely to delay for at least a month the crucial vote planned for this fall that could rearrange Iraq's political map.

The elections, which choose councils for Iraq's 18 provinces, are seen as a key step in repairing the country's sectarian rifts, particularly by opening the door for greater Sunni Arab political representation.

Many Sunnis boycotted the last election for provincial officials in January 2005, enabling Shiites and Kurds to win a disproportionate share of power at their expense - even in areas with substantial Sunni populations.

The vote, which is supposed to be held by Oct. 1, could also shift the balance of power among Shiite factions. Followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are hoping to make large gains in southern provinces, where many of the councils are dominated by rival Shiite parties in the ruling government coalition.

A delay in passing the law would mark a setback for U.S. efforts to get Iraqi politicians to overcome differences and hold the election.

One potentially explosive issue surrounding the vote appeared to be resolved - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's inclusion in the bill of a provision banning political parties with militias from running. That demand angered the Sadrist Movement and helped fuel violence this year by the Mahdi Army, the powerful militia loyal to al-Sadr.

But al-Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi said the movement's candidates would run under other, smaller lists, not under the Sadr Movement name. "We are not a party. We will enter open lists by putting in well-known figures," he said.

The friction that erupted Monday focused on the Kurds and their attempts to increase their power in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Kurds seek to include the city's Tamim province in their autonomous zone to the north, a step opposed by the area's large Sunni Arab and ethnic Turkoman populations and other communities.

The Kurds stormed out of a meeting of the heads of the major factions on the sidelines of parliament Monday, held to work out differences over a bill organizing the vote put forward by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month.

The Kurds demand that Tamim province be counted as a single voting district, apparently believing that their community will outweigh voting by other groups. The bill as it stands says the number of districts depends on a province's population.

"We have warned the faction heads, the presidency and the parliament that we will not vote on the law unless these conditions are met," Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Osman told The Associated Press.

Turkoman lawmaker Abbas al-Bayati said his community wants Tamim to have four districts to better ensure the voices of areas dominated by Turkomans, Sunni Arabs and other groups are not drowned out.

Iraq's Independent Election Commission has said the law must be passed by June 1 for it to have time to organize the vote before the Oct. 1 deadline. A delay will mean parliament will have to pass a separate law pushing back the election to November or December.

"We were promised that the law would finish on April 15, and that didn't happen, then promised May 15, and that didn't happen. Now we're promised June 1. This is an embarrassing delay, and we hope it will be passed this week," said Qassim al-Aboudi, the commission's executive director.

FIFA Provisionally Suspends Iraq From Sports Competition

Iraq's soccer federation was suspended from international competition for one year Monday because of the decision by its government to disband all national sports governing bodies.

FIFA's executive committee made the decision Monday and said it would revoke the ban if it received by Thursday "written confirmation from the Iraqi government that the decree has been annulled."

Iraq, the Asian champion, was slated to play Australia in a World Cup qualifier at Brisbane on Sunday and was scheduled to arrive in the Queensland state capital late Tuesday from Thailand, where the team was training.

In Other Developments:

• Despite a cease-fire by militia fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a roadside bomb struck a U.S. mine-resistant armored vehicle on the southern edge of Sadr City, engulfing it in flames and smoke. The U.S. military said there were no casualties.
  
• A suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted the house of the local leader of a U.S.-allied Sunni group that has turned against al Qaeda in Iraq, killing four people, including a policeman, two guards and a civilian, and wounding four others, police officials said.
  
• There was a rare roadside bombing near an Iraqi army checkpoint on the heavily guarded road that leads to the Baghdad International Airport. An Iraqi soldier and four civilians were wounded, police said.
  
• In Cairo, Saddam Hussein's former deputy has vowed that loyalists to the deposed dictator will continue fighting until the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, according to an interview published Monday in Al-Mawqif Al-Arabi, a little-known Egyptian paper. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a fugitive with a $10 million bounty on his head, has not been seen publicly since the fall of Saddam's regime in April 2003.