Excerpted from the (registration-restricted) New York Times: The top Egyptian envoy to Iraq was kidnapped late Saturday by gunmen in western Baghdad, marking the most prominent abduction of a foreign Arab official during the war, Iraqi officials said today.
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The envoy, Ihab al-Sherif, was taken from his White Cherokee in the neighborhood of Al Jamiaa, an Interior Ministry official said. The car, which had diplomatic license plates, was left at the scene. It was unclear whether Mr. Sherif was traveling with armed guards at the time.
Mr. Sherif had been appointed by the Egyptian government as its ambassador to Iraq. For much of June, the Egyptian embassy here had been awaiting an upgrade to full diplomatic status with the Iraqi government. It was not immediately known whether that had officially taken place and whether Mr. Sherif had assumed the title of full ambassador.
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The abduction came at a time when the Bush administration has been pressing Arab countries to resume full diplomatic relationships with Iraq and to lend political and financial support to this embattled country. Besides the hazards of going against public opinion in their own countries, where the American-led invasion and occupation is hugely unpopular, Arab governments are all too aware of the dangers faced by their representatives here. Last year, an Egyptian diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad, then released several days later. In August 2003, a suicide car bomb detonated at the Jordanian embassy, killing at least 11 people.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, a prominent Sunni Arab political group, quickly condemned the abduction of Mr. Sherif. "The Iraqi Islamic Party strong denounces this action," it said in a statement, "and holds the people behind it responsible for the safety of the ambassador and demands his immediate release."
Word of the kidnapping emerged as Alberto R. Gonzales, the United States attorney general, made a surprise visit to Baghdad, flying in to meet with Justice Department officials, military commanders and Iraqi politicians. Mr. Gonzales is widely seen as a polarizing figure who, as a counsel to the White House, is believed to have overseen memos specifying what kind of interrogation techniques could be used that would not fall under the definition of torture. Critics have said the definitions put forward in 2002, in which nothing less than organ failure or death constitutes torture, have given interrogators at prisons such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay too much latitude.
