DEAD SEA COAST, Jordan, 18 May 2004 — Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari yesterday warned a US turnaround on Iraq if President George W. Bush is defeated in the November presidential elections would be “catastrophic”.
“Any retreat in ambitions to build up a democracy in Iraq will be catastrophic,” Zibari told a session of the World Economic Forum conference that concluded here yesterday. He was responding to a question about a future without Bush.
“We are in need of continuous US backing,” he said. “President Bush still supports us. He led the war bravely, and this war is still justifiable from an Iraqi viewpoint,” he added.
Zibari said the US-led coalition troops “will remain in Iraq” after the handover of power to Iraqis on June 30. “However, the coalition forces will not be commanded by the interim Iraqi government.
He said he expected more violence in the run-up to the transition of power but ruled out civil war.
“An upsurge in violence may occur, but there will be neither a civil war in Iraq nor a partition of the Iraqi state,” Zibari said. The three major groups in Iraq — the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — “have no ambitions” for their own separate states.
