IRAQ: Iraq's assembly speaker has laid the blame for many of his country's problems on US, writes Michael Jansen.
The spasm of violence that killed more than 100 Iraqis and wounded 200 others yesterday followed Saturday's inaugural meeting of Iraq's national reconciliation committee.
Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki said the task of the committee would be to draw warring factions into the political process and that, already, there had been positive signals from some insurgent groups.
Assembly speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni fundamentalist, said the com- mittee would try to persuade them to disarm. However, he startled assembled foreign digni- taries and UN representatives when he laid the blame for many of Iraq's troubles on the US and called on foreigners not to interfere in Iraqi affairs.
"Just get your hands off Iraq and the Iraqi people and Muslim countries, and everything will be alright," he said. He castigated western powers for misusing their military might and criticised US support for the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. Mr Mashhadani also rejected foreign advisers and foreign-sponsored reconciliation efforts.
"What we need is reconciliation between Iraqis only - there can be no third party." His pointed remarks seemed to be addressed to the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, which was opening a conference on transitional justice and national reconciliation intended to bolster government efforts.
Some in the US military are calling for reinforcement of the 132,000 US troops to quell the intercommunal violence.
Maj Gen William B Caldwell IV, an armed forces spokesman in Iraq, admitted that the 50,000 Iraqi police and army and 7,200 US troops deployed in Baghdad, a city of five million, had failed to quell sectarian strife in the city. He predicted it could take months not weeks to make Baghdad safe.
Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, observed that communal migration was becoming a major problem.
He was particularly disturbed by the "lines being drawn in the middle of cities" and the creation of "enclaves and fortresses". The Iraqi authorities estimate that 1,100 families are being displaced every week.
Increasingly alarmed about the situation, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia religious figure, issued a statement condemning "terror, displacement, killing, kidnapping and everything that words cannot describe" and urging Iraqis "to exert maximum effort to stop the bloodletting".
The ayatollah also castigated Israel for its offensive in Lebanon and the international community for allowing the attacks on civilians and Lebanon's infrastructure to continue.
"The world community needs to stop this flagrant aggression" while the Muslim community "needs to stand by the . . . Lebanese people in order to ensure their humanitarian requirements are met". He warned that the "oppression suffered by the nations of the region, including the Lebanese, will increase their anger . . . and hinder peace efforts".
Radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also addressed the crisis in Lebanon and called on Mr al-Maliki to cancel his visit to Washington where he is due to meet President Bush on Tuesday and address a joint session of congress on Wednesday.
Mr al-Sadr called the visit a humiliation and demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.