DUBAI, 6 April 2004 — A Gulf newspaper yesterday said US-led coalition troops in Iraq made a mistake in using force against supporters of Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, while another paper said peace would only return to Iraq when occupation forces left.
“The coalition forces committed an additional error in their reaction to the supporters of Moqtada Sadr,” the Qatari daily Al-Raya said, adding that the forces “should have shown proof of restraint ... and not opened fire against demonstrators who were exercising the natural right to protest peacefully.”
It called on US-led forces to “renounce all recourse to armed force so that the current escalation does not become a political and security earthquake with unforeseeable consequences.”
Doha daily Al-Sharq said: “The restoration of security in Iraq can only be realized by the end of the occupation and the establishment of a national government able to deal with the new reality created by the departure of Saddam (Hussein).”
The newspaper added: “All the signs suggest a possible ethnic civil war.”
United Arab Emirates paper Al-Bayan called for Arab countries to do something about the bloodshed in Iraq and not remain mere spectators.
“What is happening in Iraq harms us. Iraq bleeds and we Arabs observe in silence as spectators,” it said in its editorial page.
The paper denounced “the dirty secret hands” that it said were behind the instability in Iraq which was going to plunge the country into chaos.
Since Sunday, clashes between coalition troops and Sadr followers have left at least 46 Iraqis, eight US and one Salvadoran soldier dead.
