CAIRO, 20 November 2005 — Bickering marred the first day of Iraqi reconciliation talks in Cairo yesterday, amid confessional tensions which flared up when a former Baathist official accused the delegates of being US stooges.
Shiite and Kurdish delegates stormed out of the conference, bringing proceedings to a halt yesterday, but were persuaded to return after a delegate apologized for a speech seen as insulting.
The walkout and resumption highlighted the difficulties of trying to bridge deep divisions among the sectarian delegates at the meeting, which the Arab League called to prepare for a bigger reconciliation conference to be held later in Iraq.
Hours after the meeting began, an Iraqi Christian delegate, Ibrahim Menas Al-Youssefi, took the podium and accused fellow delegates of being US stooges. He said the entire Iraqi political process was illegitimate and orchestrated by Washington.
Shiite and Kurdish delegates left the closed session in disgust.
“They are insulting the Iraqi people and they are insulting the constitution on which several million Iraqis have voted,” Shiite legislator Jawad Al-Maliki told reporters outside the chamber. “They want the situation in Iraq to go back to the way it used to be so that the mass graves can return.”
Arab foreign ministers, particularly Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, promptly engaged the Shiite and Kurdish delegates and urged them to return to the chamber.
Within the hour, Sunni delegate Ahmed Shehab Al-Dulaimi told reporters that the conference had resumed after the delegate apologized and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa had ruled that Al-Youssefi’s comments would be struck from the record.
Al-Dulaimi said Al-Youssefi belonged to the Christian Democrtaic Party, a Chaldo-Assyrian group. A Shiite delegate, Sami Al-Askari, said Al-Youssefi was a former member of the intelligence service under former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The meetings are aimed at setting a date and agenda for a reconciliation conference to be held in Baghdad, but optimism over the unprecedented talks was dampened by exchanges of mutual recriminations.
“We have set a red line: There is no room for Baathists in Iraq,” Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told the meeting, which was attended by around 100 Iraqi leaders and regional officials.
Jaafari, a devout Shiite, echoed reservations voiced by the ruling Shiite majority over the participation in reconciliation talks of former members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted Sunni-dominated regime.
Egypt and the Arab League had pressured the Iraqi government to allow former Baathists “with no blood on their hands” to be included in the talks.
“I appreciate Amr Mousa’s efforts that led to this meeting, but here’s what I tell him: it may be difficult to gather all the protagonists but it is even more difficult to deal with the reality on the ground, when the other is carrying arms and spilling blood,” Jaafari said.
The head of Iraq’s leading Sunni Muslim authority reacted angrily to Jaafari’s comments.
“Jaafari’s speech was characterized by a spirit of exclusion and he painted a rosy picture of the situation in Iraq,” said Hareth Al-Dari, who heads the Committee of Muslim Scholars.
Dari described Jaafari’s opening speech as “disappointing words that do not lead us to believe we can reach a sincere understanding” and went on to accuse the Shiite-dominated regime of marginalizing the disempowered Sunni minority.
Iraq’s disempowered Sunni minority has so far boycotted much of the post-war political process and consistently demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of the 170,000 US-led foreign troops.
Vice President Ghazi Al-Yawar, a leading Sunni tribal leader, argued that the talks would have benefited from wider participation.
“All Iraqis should be here if we want our problems to be solved,” he told reporters.
Government spokesman Leith Kubba was pleased with the list of participants, but said it was too early to tell whether reconciliation was under way.
“We don’t have too high expectations. The purpose of this meeting is to develop an agenda. If we reach an agreed agenda, this will already be a big step,” he said.
Some people attending the talks were optimistic.
“Maybe there are no major figures of the former regime but there are many leading Arab nationalists who were outside the process and against the occupation,” said Yonadam Kanna, head of Iraq’s Assyrian Democratic Movement.
“With the Iraqi elections on Dec. 15 and this reconciliation effort we could be witnessing a turning point,” he said.
— With additional input from agencies.
