UN envoy urges Iraq to stop slide to civil war
Source: Reuters
By Claudia Parsons BAGHDAD, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The U.N. envoy to Iraq warned on Saturday that the "carnage" and "blind acts of revenge" of the past few days were tearing Iraq apart and urged the government to resolve its differences and stop the slide into civil war. Ashraf Qazi, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special representative for Iraq, also urged Iraq's neighbours to help. Qazi said car bombs on Thursday that killed more than 200 people in a Shi'ite area, and revenge attacks on Sunni Arabs, were part of a vicious cycle of sectarian violence "tearing apart the very political and social fabric of Iraq". "No country could tolerate such a cancer in its body politic," Qazi said in a statement, calling on politicians and the people to show sincere determination to save Iraq. "This could only be done through a genuine national dialogue aimed at resolving key political issues and developing a national consensus in support of policies and measures to prevent extremists from destroying Iraq," the statement said. "Otherwise, Iraq would continue to descend into a civil war situation and people would become the victims of an unprecedented human rights catastrophe." REVENGE Sectarian bitterness has surfaced within the 6-month-old Shi'ite-led government after attacks on politicians. The government has imposed a curfew on Baghdad since Thursday and called for calm, hoping to avert a spiral of revenge attacks. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, convened senior government leaders on Friday for what he called a successful and frank exchange of views. "For the first time we exchanged views openly," he said. Another meeting was set for Saturday. Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi told Al Jazeera all sides should work together and "talk the same language to pass a similar message to the Iraqi people". But Iraq's leading Sunni cleric Harith al-Dari, who is wanted under an arrest warrant issued this month for inciting sectarian violence, accused the government on Saturday of bias. "This government ... exploits sectarianism," he said at a news conference in Cairo. Radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Baghdad powerbase of Sadr City was the target of Thursday's bombs which killed 202 people, urged Dari on Friday to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, prohibiting the killing of Shi'ites. Sadr's aides also threatened to pull out of the government if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki went ahead with a planned meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan next week. The past week has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity between Iraq and its neighbours, particularly Syria and Iran, aimed at enlisting help in stabilizing the country. Qazi said no country in the region would gain from Iraq's "current tragedy" so they all had an obligation to help. "Qazi ... called on the international community, especially the neighbours of Iraq, to concert their efforts to enable the government and people of Iraq to address the dire challenges of violence, mistrust and division that threaten to overwhelm them," the statement said. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Wright in Cairo)
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