Baghdad, Iraq ? Leading Sunni Muslim politicians Thursday urged postponement of the Jan. 30 national elections, and a lieutenant of Iraq’s most feared insurgent leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was captured this week, the country’s national security minister said Thursday.

Elsewhere, U.S. troops said they had uncovered the largest weapons cache to date in Fallujah, where Iraqi officials said more than 2,000 people died in the weeklong U.S.-led offensive aimed at curbing the insurgency so that elections could be held nationwide.

The Fallujah siege angered many in the influential Sunni minority, producing calls to boycott the ballot, a move that could cost the new government much-needed legitimacy.

Sunni politician Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and a member of the Iraqi National Council, said delaying the ballot by three months or more would enable political leaders to convince Sunni clerics and others to abandon their boycott call.

Seeking support

“I think that it will not be in the interest of anyone to let large segments of the Iraqi population be completely left out of the political process,” Pachachi, leader of the Independent Democrats party, told The Associated Press.

In a bid toward drawing Sunni support, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said an Iraqi delegation would meet in Amman, Jordan, with “a number of political opposition movements,” including some former Saddam Hussein supporters on the “most wanted list,” to convince them to abandon the insurgency and take part in the election.

No date for the meeting with former Baath Party figures was announced, and Zebari did not say who would attend, although he ruled out contacts with “terrorists.” He said the meeting was encouraged by Arab governments at this week’s international conference on Iraq at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.

It appeared the contacts were aimed at trying to strike a deal with “nationalist” opposition groups and dividing them from religious extremists such as al-Qaida-linked terror boss al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian.

Iraqi National Guard soldiers remove a body after two men were found slain Thursday in Mosul, Iraq. Twenty bodies were found in Mosul in past weeks, including 10 Iraqi soldiers. Insurgents rose up this month in Mosul during an offensive by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Fallujah.

The captured al-Zarqawi aide was identified as Abu Saeed. Security Minister Qassem Dawoud said Saeed had been arrested two days before in the northern city of Mosul, where insurgents staged an uprising this month and virtually all the city’s 5,000 police fled. U.S. military officials say they believe al-Zarqawi may have fled to northern Iraq, perhaps to Mosul, after American forces this month retook Fallujah, which he and his men had used as a base.

Dawoud provided no details on the aide or his arrest, and a U.S. military spokesman said he was not aware of the detention. Al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for devastating bombings and the beheadings of foreign hostages, which have chilled Iraqis and reportedly eroded his support among other insurgent leaders.

The weapons cache, described by the U.S. military as the largest uncovered so far in Fallujah, was discovered Wednesday in the Saad Bin Abi Waqas Mosque, where fugitive rebel leader Abdullah al-Janabi often preached.

Troops discovered small arms, artillery shells, heavy machine guns, and anti-tank mines inside the mosque, the U.S. military said.

U.S. forces also uncovered what may have been a mobile bomb-making factory as well as mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, launchers, and parts of surface-to-air weapons systems elsewhere in the mosque compound, the military added.

At a news conference in Baghdad, Dawoud said troops found the suspected chemical lab in the southwestern district of Fallujah, where pockets of insurgents are still holding out following the Nov. 8 U.S.-Iraqi assault.

“We also found in the laboratory manuals and instructions spelling out procedures for making explosives,” he said. “They also spoke about making anthrax.”

Dawoud showed pictures of a shelf containing what he said were various chemicals — about two dozen glass and plastic bottles as well as plastic sacks full of some powdered substance labeled in Arabic potassium cyanide. One of the pictures showed a line of plastic-covered computer terminals and chairs in a row.

Dawoud said the death toll for the entire Fallujah operation stood at more than 2,085, although he gave no breakdown. About 54 U.S. troops were among those killed.

In the southern city of Basra, police said Thursday they had arrested five Arab foreign fighters who escaped from Fallujah with plans to attack coalition troops and Iraqi police in the south.

The five — two Saudis, two Tunisians and a Libyan, were arrested Wednesday night at a checkpoint north of Basra, police said.

With resistance in Fallujah nearly ended, some 5,000 U.S., British and Iraqi forces have turned their sights on insurgent strongholds just south of Baghdad. U.S. officials said 81 suspected rebels were wounded up early Thursday in raids around Youssifiyeh.

About 116 suspects have been detained since the offensive, codenamed “Operation Plymouth Rock,” began Tuesday, the military said.