US, Europeans offer NATO aid for Iraq; Sistani envoy buried

By: Hamoud Kufi

KAZEMIYAH, Iraq: People from all walks of life attended funeral procession of a representative of Ayatullah Sayed Ali As-Sistani in Kazemiyah on Saturday while terrorists targeted offices of two political parties - one of them run by Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Alawi - a police station and a government building in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Ayatullah As-Sistani’s local representative Hussein Al-Harithi was gunned-down by unknown assailants Friday evening after coming out of Friday prayers.

In the Baqouba attacks, terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades at the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq headed by Sayed Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, said party member Maitham Ibrahim. Three party members died and two were injured, hospital officials said.

Gunmen also stormed the offices of interim Premier Alawi's political party, the Iraq National Accord, setting off an explosion before fleeing, witnesses said. No one was hurt. Flames and smoke poured from the building's third story windows. Police sealed off the area.

Alawi was put under a death sentence earlier this week in an audiotape posted on a website in the name of the Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Mussab Az-Zarqawi. “Alawi ... you have escaped many times, without knowing it, from well organized ambushes that we laid,” says the voice. “But we pledge to go all the way without giving up so that you will meet the same fate as Ezzedine Salim,” head of the now dissolved Governing Council who was assassinated in a Baghdad suicide car bombing on May 17.

In another development, the US and the EU have pledged strong support to the new Iraqi government ahead of the 30 June transfer of power.

The leaders agreed in a joint statement to back Iraq's request for NATO military and support the training of Iraqi security forces, and to reduce Iraq's international debt, estimated to be $120 billion. But the joint statement also made a veiled criticism of abuse of prisoners by American soldiers. EU leaders raised the topic with Bush in their private meetings Saturday, and also aired it publicly during a joint news conference.

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