RAMADI: Iraq’s finance minister resigned yesterday in front of crowds of Sunni protesters who have rallied daily against the Shiite-led government for more than two months, demanding an end to marginalization of their minority sect.

The country’s precarious sectarian balance has come under growing strain as Iraq Sunnis vent frustrations that have built up since the US-led invasion of 2003 overthrew Saddam Hussein and empowered majority Shiites through the ballot box.

“I came today in order to announce my resignation from this government in front of you,” Rafaie Al-Esawi, also a Sunni, told a crowd of protesters from a stage in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, on the border with Syria.

The demonstrations in the country’s Sunni heartland are fueling concerns the increasingly sectarian conflict in neighboring Syria will push Iraq back toward the bloody Sunni-Shiite strife of 2006-2007.

It was Maliki’s arrest of Esawi’s bodyguards that ignited the protests in the first place last December.

“More than 70 days of demonstrations and this government hasn’t fulfilled our people’s demands,” Esawi later told Reuters.

“It doesn’t honor me to be part of a sectarian government. I decided to stay with my people.”

Iraqi authorities said Esawi’s bodyguards had confessed to involvement in assassinations carried out in coordination with security men employed by Sunni Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi, who fled into exile a year ago and was later sentenced to death in absentia for terrorism. Esawi was once a leader of armed group Hamas Al-Iraq, which was active in Anbar.