Other prominent Sunnis added their voices to calls for a defeat of the constitution in October.

Shamsul Ulama, prominent sunni leader said about him:" Panakkad Thangal brought up his son in Islamic ways and compelled them to serve the public ".

His name was found along with the names of other prominent Iraqi Sunni leaders who had been targeted for assassination in a captured al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) document.

"Lots of Sunni Arabs feel that they made a mistake by boycotting Iraq's election," Adnan Pachachi, a prominent Sunni whose representative attended the conference, said in a telephone interview from London.

During a session of Parliament last week, prominent Sunni and Shiite legislators bitterly accused each other of sectarianism and promoting violence.

In the past year, the two other prominent Sunnis in the government, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud Mashhadani, were attacked personally or lost family members.

Despite this, the party has maintained that it is non-secular, even though the Ba'ath Party contained many prominent Sunnis.

Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltut (23 April 1893 - 13 December 1963) was a prominent Egyptian Sunni religious scholar and Islamic theologian best known for his work in Islamic reform.

In Washington on Monday, President Bush met in the Oval Office with the most prominent Sunni in the Iraqi government, Ghazi al-Yawar, the president of the interim government.

A Sunni leader threatened to establish a "Free Lebanese Army", if the authorities did not work to solve the murder of the prominent Lebanese anti-Assad Sunni cleric.