PM Maliki urges tribal unity in Iraq

PM Maliki urges tribal unity in Iraq

August 27, 2006
By Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has urged tribal leaders to unite to end bloodshed between Sunnis and Shi'ites that has raised fears of civil war, as at least 14 people were killed in sectarian raids.

"Iraq needs all of its sons during this stage. There is no difference between Shi'ite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, Turkman and Assyrian," Maliki told hundreds of tribal leaders in Baghdad.

The gathering - on Saturday local time - was the first in a series to promote dialogue under his national reconciliation programme.

The United States says a major security crackdown by Iraqi and US troops in Baghdad, where the bloodshed is worst, is not a durable solution to Iraq's instability and must be accompanied by movement on the political front.

As tribal chieftains dressed in traditional robes met in a hotel in the capital, a Sunni Arab legislator was freed nearly two months after her kidnapping sparked a political furore.

A member of her Iraqi Islamic Party said Taiseer Najah al- Mashhadani was released after her captors made contact with Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi. Some Sunni leaders had accused Shi'ite Muslim militias of being behind the abduction.

Maliki, a Shi'ite, said his national reconciliation plan was a "wide door" open to all those who wanted to take part in rebuilding the country.

"The liberation of the nation from any foreign hand cannot be without national unity, the unity that our forefathers built during hundreds of years," he said.

The government hopes the leaders can exercise influence over their tribes, but it is unclear how effective they can be among Iraqis increasingly turning to religious leaders for guidance.

While Maliki sought to ease sectarian tensions, a Shi'ite leader said in comments likely to infuriate the minority Sunnis - dominant under Saddam Hussein - that Shi'ites should form their own region in the south.

Shi'ites, the majority community in Iraq, were oppressed under Saddam but now lead the government of national unity.

Sunnis, from whom insurgents draw support, fear federalism will cut them off from Iraq's oil-rich regions in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north. Sunnis live mostly in central Iraq, where there is no oil.

"The biggest assurance to our people is implementing federalism ... which must be voted on by the people," Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shi'ite-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was quoted as telling party members.

In the latest sectarian violence, gunmen in the religiously mixed town of Baquba north of Baghdad attacked a Shi'ite family, killing two women and two young children.

A car bomb outside a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Iskandaria south of Baghdad killed three people and wounded 17, police said. In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, gunmen killed three Shi'ites working in a bakery.

Saturday's violence was not been restricted to Sunnis and Shi'ites. Four Kurdish civilians were killed by gunmen near ethnically mixed Kirkuk, a city rich in oil.

Iraq's minister for national dialogue, Akram al-Hakim, told state television other meetings would be held to bring together clerics, army officers and civil and political groups.

One Sunni tribal leader set out a list of demands, including a five-year delay in implementing federalism under the constitution, the disbandment of a committee that has purged thousands of mostly Sunni members of the former ruling Baath party from state institutions, and the disarming of militias.

Sunnis accuse militias linked to the government of fuelling much of the sectarian conflict.

- REUTERS

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