Iraqi minister is shot dead in Baghdad

Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi deputy foreign minister yesterday, shooting him as he drove to work through the centre of Baghdad.

Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi deputy foreign minister yesterday, shooting him as he drove to work through the centre of Baghdad.

Bassam Salih Kubba, Iraq's senior career diplomat, was sitting in the back seat of a car being driven to the Foreign Ministry. Near the al-Assaf mosque in Azamiyah, a Sunni Muslim district notoriously hostile to the occupation, gunmen drove up behind him and opened fire.

As they passed Mr Kubba's car they fired more shots through the side windows, mortally wounding him in the stomach. His driver was injured less seriously. The diplomat died in hospital. Mr Kubba, 60, from a well-known Shia family, was recently appointed the director general of the ministry. He had served as ambassador to China and acting chief of the Iraqi mission to the United Nation.

The killing is also a sign that the resistance is increasingly well-organised in Baghdad. The base of support for Saddam Hussein's regime came from Sunnis in rural areas and towns such as Fallujah and Baquba, where guerrilla activity has been strongest, but the war appears to be spreading to the capital.

Izzadine Saleem, the president of the disbanded Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), was killed by a suicide bomber on 17 May in his car entering the Green Zone. Salama al-Khafaji, another council member, was attacked south of Baghdad on 27 May; her son and bodyguard were killed. Less well-known officials have also been assassinated.

The level of violence has fallen over the past week. This is largely because the US army has stopped its advance into the holy city of Najaf and has left Fallujah, besieged by the US Marines in April, in the hands of the resistance. In neither case was it able to achieve its declared aims.

Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister in the interim government to which power is to be transferred on 30 June, has said: "What happened in Fallujah and other places is not to be repeated."

Mr Allawi will be held to his word. He received support from a surprising source. The radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been fighting US troops in Najaf, said he was ready for dialogue with the government if it worked to end the occupation. "I support the new interim government," Mr Sadr said at Friday prayers in a sermon read out by an aide. "I ask you open a new page for Iraq and for peace."

What Mr Sadr means by this apparent change of stance was spelled out later. Ahmed al-Shibani, his spokesman, said on al-Arabiya television: "It has to put a timetable for the end of the occupation. This is the main and principled way which would lead us to recognise this government."

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia leader, has similarly given qualified support to the interim government.

But for security Mr Allawi is wholly dependent on the 138,000 US troops, along with their British, Polish and Ukrainian auxiliaries. This is not going change in the near future. Unless he can show he is not a puppet of the US, he will become discredited.

Although a Shia himself, he is a former Baath party member and his government is likely to appeal to Sunnis. He is already receiving friendlier treatment from al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, the Arab satellite channels which are influential in shaping Iraqi opinion. With the US administration desperate to keep Iraq quiet before November's presidential elections, Mr Allawi has some strong cards to play in negotiating with Washington.

Otherwise Iraq teeters on the edge of anarchy. The tortured body of a man working for a Lebanese telecommunications company was dumped beside the road between Fallujah and Ramadi. He was seized last Thursday. At the same time seven Turkish contractors were freed. Gunmen had demanded that Turkish companies pull out of Iraq.