BAGHDAD, 13 July 2007 — The leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite political party said he will stand by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and urged Sunnis not to abandon the political process, promising serious efforts to solve any problem angering them. Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim’s written comments were received by the Associated Press yesterday in response to questions sent him last week. The leader of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq is in Iran for cancer treatment.
Meanwhile, a fierce battle between US troops and Shiite militants in Baghdad killed at least 13 people yesterday, including an Iraqi photographer from the international news agency Reuters, medics said. Early yesterday, a barrage of mortar shells slammed into the eastern Al-Amin neighborhood of Baghdad, officials said.
After the attack, US forces arrived on the scene following which clashes broke out between them and the militants of Mahdi Army, the group loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr, they said. Medics in two city hospitals said they had received 13 bodies of people killed in the clashes, while security officials said the toll could be higher.
An Iraqi photographer and his driver working for Reuters were among the dead, witnesses and the company said. Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed when a rocket or shell hit a minibus carrying wounded Iraqis from the neighborhood, which they were filming. Witnesses claimed a US helicopter had fired the missile, although a Reuters statement said the explosion could also have been caused by a mortar shell of the kind fired by militia fighters.
Maliki’s coalition has been weakened by a Sunni Arab boycott and wrangling over political benchmarks that the United States is pushing the prime minister to pass. Some Sunni politicians have called for removing Maliki calling him biased toward his fellow Shiites.
The prime minister and his aides have said repeatedly in recent weeks that they plan a government reshuffle to streamline it — by uniting “moderate” parties and reducing the size of the Cabinet — in order to push through logger-jammed legislation.
Hakim said, “work is going on to back the prime minister and to strengthen the government and stand by its side ... and work so that the government be more powerful than it is today.”
“The political process will not collapse because the vast majority of the Iraqi people support the political process that is based on the constitution and elections,” he said. “When it comes to our Sunni brothers withdrawing from the political process, we will work as we did in the past and continue to keep them with us and participate together in the rule and serving the Iraqi people,” he said. “If there are problems, then there should be serious efforts to solve them.”
The Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni coalition in Parliament and Cabinet, walked out of Parliament after Speaker Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, was voted out of his position on June 11.
The front’s ministers later began a boycott of the Cabinet to protest an arrest warrant was issued against culture minister and a raid on his house in connection to the killings of a secular Sunni legislator’s sons.
Iraqi security forces seized 200 explosive belts along the Syrian border, a police spokesman said, reinforcing Baghdad’s claims that its western neighbor is not doing enough to stop the flow of fighters and weapons to Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The belts were found during a search of a truck that had crossed into Iraq from Syria at the Waleed border station, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said. “When the truck was searched, 200 explosives belts were found in it,” the general said. He said the driver was detained but he would not give his name or nationality.
