3 Sunnis Promoting Vote Slain in Iraq

[Bluebear]

Masked gunmen killed three Sunni Arabs in front of horrified witnesses outside a mosque in Mosul on Friday, after grabbing them as they hung posters urging fellow Sunnis to vote in a referendum on the new constitution.

As the Monday deadline to finish the constitution approaches, Sunni Arabs and some Shiites rallied in Baghdad and elsewhere to protest calls for a federated state — a demand of the Kurds and the biggest Shiite party but a key stumbling block to an agreement on the charter.

Talks continued into Saturday morning with U.S. officials intensifying pressure on the Kurds to accept Shiite and Sunni demands for a greater role of Islam in government and to abandon their demand for the right to secede, Kurdish officials said.

The three members of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, were seized in a Mosul neighborhood where they were promoting voter registration for the Oct. 15 referendum on the new constitution, said party official Nouredine al-Hayali. They were driven to another neighborhood, shoved against a wall near the Dhi al-Nourein mosque and shot dead while more masked gunmen blocked off a major street, witnesses said. The gunmen then fled in three cars, leaving the bodies behind....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050820/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&printer=1