BAGHDAD, 6 August 2007 — Iraq’s most senior leaders are to hold a crisis summit this week to find a way to heal the sectarian split in their beleaguered national unity government and head off more violence, they said yesterday.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that Iraq’s leaders “need to work harder” on unity, as the Shiite premier refused to accept the resignation of six Sunni members of his Cabinet and promised to discuss their concerns.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki yesterday met President Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd, and Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, a fellow Shiite. Tellingly, Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi, the senior Sunni Arab in the government and a critic of Maliki’s alleged sectarian bias, was not present, but his colleagues vowed to hold inclusive talks in the coming days.
“The prime minister’s position is that he has refused to accept the resignations. This is a good thing and the door is open to discuss this topic,” Abdul Mehdi announced after the meeting.
On Wednesday, Iraq’s main Sunni political bloc the National Concord Front said it was withdrawing its five ministers and deputy prime minister from the coalition, dealing a blow to the government’s claims to represent all Iraqis.
Since the US-led invasion of March 2003, Iraq has plunged into an abyss of overlapping civil conflicts that have divided its rival religious and ethnic communities, and left tens of thousands of civilians dead. Last year’s formation of an elected government of national unity held out the promise of reconciliation, but Maliki’s rule has been undermined by bitter sectarian rivalries both within and outside his fragile coalition.
Shiite parties suspect Sunni leaders of nostalgia for the days of former dictator Saddam Hussein, when their minority sect dominated political power, and accuse them of supporting violent insurgent groups. Sunni leaders accuse the triumphant Shiite parties of ties with Iraq’s powerful neighbor Iran and condemn their alleged complicity with Shiite militias that have been accused of attacking Sunni civilians.
The bad blood between the parties has poisoned political debate and all but paralyzed the work of government, culminating in this week’s withdrawal by the main Sunni bloc, a possible death knell for the coalition.
Yesterday, the Concord Front said it had no immediate intention of withdrawing its resignations but held the door open to dialogue.
“It is not necessary for us to be a part of the government. The door to dialogue is open, even if we are outside the government,” said Saleem Abdullah, spokesman for the Concord Front.
Maliki’s US backers are watching developments with concern, aware that the breakdown could stymie efforts to reconcile the warring factions and undermine the work of 155,000 American troops to end the conflict.
“We’ve been very clear that we don’t think that they have achieved enough and that they need to work harder,” Rice told Fox News. “We’ve been very clear that there is an urgency to this.”
Meanwhile, Iraqi police said yesterday they had found 60 decomposed bodies dumped in thick grass in Baquba, north of Baghdad. There was no indication of how the 60 people had been killed, police said. Baquba is the capital of volatile Diyala province, where thousands of extra US and Iraqi soldiers have been sent to stem growing violence.
Also yesterday, a barrage of mortars at dawn killed at least 11 people as residents lined up for fuel at a Baghdad petrol station. Police said overnight they had found 21 corpses dumped throughout the city.
