Sunni Arab members of a committee drafting Iraq's new constitution ended their boycott yesterday, six days after they walked out to protest the assassinations of two fellow Sunni constitution framers.

The Sunni decision lifted the threat that the country's new constitution would be a product of only two of three major Iraqi ethnic and religious groups, leaving out the Sunni Arabs who form the core of the insurgency and thus failing to provide a hope for a political exit from the incessant violence gripping the country.

Six of the 12 Sunnis on the committee rejoined their colleagues yesterday morning at the closed-door meeting, said Baqir Hammoudi, secretary to Humam Hammoudi, the head of the committee.

Sunni member Ali al-Mishhedani said the others were absent because they lived too far from Baghdad or had other personal commitments. He said the others were expected in Baghdad later in the day.

Saleh al-Mutlaq, another Sunni member, said the Sunnis would meet today to review the charter's preliminary draft.

One of the subcommittees working on constitutional articles involving citizenship and personal freedoms announced agreement on several issues. The new language will state that all Iraqis are equal under the law "regardless of sex, race, origin, colour, religion, sect, belief, or opinion."

The draft articles also affirm the family as "the nucleus of society and the state should preserve its values and religious and patriotic principles." It also bans child labour, violence within the family as guarantee "a balance between the role of women in the family and her work in society."

Sunni Arab participation in the drafting is considered essential in order to win approval for the charter among the country's influential minority, which forms the core of the anti-US insurgency. The draft must be approved by parliament by August 15 and submitted to the voters in an October referendum.

Meanwhile, the killing continued yesterday, with a suicide minibus bomb attack outside a hotel used by US and other foreign contractors, killing at least 12 people and injuring at least 18, hospital officials and police said. Two police commandoes also died in a suicide attack a few hours later.

In other violence yesterday, gunmen killed a family of four in Samarra as they waited on the street for a ride in the tense city north of Baghdad. Subhi Thamir Hussein al-Badri, his wife and two sons were gunned down, police Lieutenant Colonel Ayoub Mahmoud said. The reason for the killing was unclear, police said.

Also yesterday, the United States has accepted Poland's plans to pull most of its 1,700 troops from Iraq at the beginning of next year, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said.

Poland, one of Washington's biggest European allies in Iraq, runs a multinational stabilisation zone south of Baghdad.

"The current (six-month troop) rotation in Iraq will be the last one. By the end of January we would like to pull the troops and replace them with smaller groups, which could for example help train the Iraqi army," Kwasniewski told public radio.

In another development, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who faces trial on charges of crimes against humanity, will not be permitted to stand trial or serve his sentence in Sweden, a Swedish official said yesterday.

"We have said 'no'," said Justice Ministry Director Ann Marie Bolin Pennegaard, referring to a request from one of Hussein's lawyers for him to either await trial, stand trial or serve his sentence in Sweden.

(China Daily July 26, 2005)