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An armed Shi'ite militiaman controls the crowd at the funeral for victims of a mortar attack in a residential area of central Baghdad March 31, 2006. Two women and one child were killed and two more people were wounded in the attack which took place early Friday morning, police said.
REUTERS/CEERWAN AZIZ PREVIOUS |
An armed Shi'ite militiaman controls the crowd at the funeral for victims of a mortar attack in a residential area of central Baghdad March 31, 2006. Two women and one child were killed and two more people were wounded in the attack which took place early Friday morning, police said.
REUTERS/CEERWAN AZIZ |
A woman grieves at the funeral for victims of a mortar attack in a residential area of central Baghdad March 31, 2006. Two women and one child were killed and two more people were wounded in the attack which took place early Friday morning, police said.
REUTERS/CEERWAN AZIZ | NEXT
Men carry a coffin at the funeral for a victim of a mortar attack in a residential area of central Baghdad March 31, 2006. Two women and one child were killed and two more people were wounded in the attack which took place early Friday morning, police said.
REUTERS/CEERWAN AZIZ BAGHDAD, March 31 (Reuters) - A leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric on Friday demanded the United States sack its envoy, heading a push for a unity government, accusing him of siding with fellow Sunni Muslims in the sectarian conflict gripping the country. Ayatollah Mohammed al-Yacoubi's call at Friday prayers came as political leaders held their latest round of negotiations to form a new government, months after parliamentary elections in December, as sectarian bloodshed rises. In a sermon read out at mosques for Friday prayers, Yacoubi said Washington had underestimated the conflict between Shi'ites and the once dominant Sunni Arab minority, which many fear threatens to trigger a civil war. "By this, they are either misled by reports, which lack objectivity and credibility, submitted to the United States by their sectarian ambassador to Iraq ... or they are denying this fact," Yacoubi said in the message, later issued as a statement. "It (the United States) should not yield to terrorist blackmail and should not be deluded or misled by spiteful sectarians. It should replace its ambassador to Iraq if it wants to protect itself from further failures." URGENT EFFORTS After the imam of Baghdad's Rahman mosque read that line, worshippers chanted "Allahu Akbar" -- God is Greatest. Iraq's political leaders held their latest round of talks on forming a new government on Friday, under mounting pressure at home and from the United States to form a government of national unity to end the sectarian violence and avert civil war. Afghan-born ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the highest ranking Muslim in the U.S. administration has spearheaded urgent U.S. efforts to press politicians to agree on a government embracing Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds to avert a sectarian civil war. The Shi'ite-Sunni bloodshed has worsened dramatically since a major Shi'ite shrine in the city of Samarra was bombed on Feb. 22, sparking a wave of violence and poisoning the political atmosphere during the crucial negotiations. Hundreds have died since and more than 30,000 people have fled their homes as Shi'ite and Sunni militias seek to cleanse their neighbourhoods. Yacoubi is the spiritual guide for the Fadhila party, one of the smaller but still influential components of the dominant Islamist Alliance bloc. He is not part of the senior clerical council around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf. Nonetheless, Shi'ite politicians said his comments reflected widespread disenchantment among them with the ambassador. "It's a very good statement," one senior official in the Alliance, not from Fadhila, said of Yacoubi's sermon. Khalilzad, who has been in Iraq 10 months, has been criticised by Shi'ite leaders, who openly resent his championing of efforts to tempt Sunnis away from armed revolt into a coalition government. Yacoubi said: "The American ambassador and the tyrants of the Arab states are giving political support to those parties who provide political cover for the terrorists." SAMARRA BOMBING Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim accused Khalilzad last month of provoking the Samarra bombing by making remarks critical of "sectarian" tendencies among the Shi'ite leadership. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has also criticised U.S. "interference" this week in Iraq's political process. Jaafari's nomination to a second term by the Alliance is a major sticking point in talks with Sunnis and ethnic Kurds on a government. Shi'ite politicians say Khalilzad has delivered messages from U.S. President George W. Bush to both Hakim and Sistani in the past week urging them to drop Jaafari, whose nomination was secured with the support of Iranian-backed cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. U.S. diplomats deny taking sides in the issue. Khalilzad is now planning talks with Iran, Washington's old enemy in the region, to try to ease the crisis in Iraq. The United States accuses Shi'ite Iran of fomenting violence. Politicians have been debating how to form a new government since parliamentary elections in December, but appear to have made little real progress. There is also haggling over a Sunni demand for a security veto and the issue of who gets what job remains wide open. (Additional reporting by Hiba Moussa, Seif Fouad, Terry Friel and Alastair Macdonald)
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