CAIRO: Iraq and its powerful neighbor Iran were fuming Sunday over comments by President Hosni Mubarak, a major broker in Middle East politics, about Iraqi civil war and Shiites allegiance to Tehran
The comments have upset Iraqi people who come from different religious and ethnic backgrounds and has astonished and discontented the Iraqi government, incumbent Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari told reporters, flanked by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Adnan Al-Pachchi, a Sunni and the parliament s acting speaker.
Egypt had been one of the main driving forces behind an attempt at uniting Iraqi ranks by sponsoring a national reconciliation conference, still due to take place in the near future. Expressing his anguish at Mubarak s statements, Talabani said these accusations against our Shiite brothers are baseless and we have asked our foreign minister to talk to Egypt about this.
We are very surprised and annoyed by such comments, Talabani told Iraqi television. Reality and historical facts show that the Shiites always have been patriotic and genuine Iraqis. This unfair accusation against Shiites is baseless.
Iran, with its 90 percent Shiite Muslim population, many of whom make frequent pilgrimages to the shrines of revered Shiite imams in Iraq, did not take kindly to Mubarak s comments.
It is evident that the Islamic Republic of Iran is only interested in seeking security and stability in Iraq, and the region, foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. We have a lot of influence in Iraq, and in no way we have used it to interfere in Iraq s affaires, our influence is a spiritual one, he added.
Tehran cut diplomatic ties with Cairo after then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979. In a sign of antipathy, the Islamic republic named a street in Tehran after Sadat s assassin. Analysts voiced their surprise at Mubarak s comments, which they considered to be a diplomatic blunder. Shiites may be loyal to Iran emotionally but not politically. Comments that Shiites are manipulated by Iran are a huge exaggeration, said Bahgat Korany, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. It was completely uncalled for, said Mohammed Sayed Said, political analyst with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. He is giving an impression that there is a Sunni-Shiite divide in the Arab world. This way he is condemning half the population. The Egyptian presidency sought to defuse the tension engendered by Mubarak s interview and assured he was not pointing an accusatory finger at Tehran. The president s words reflected his great concern over the deterioration of the situation and his commitment to the unity of Iraq, spokesman Suleiman Awwad said in a statement carried by the official MENA news agency. What the president meant was that Shiites have brotherly relations with Iran because it hosts Shiite holy sites, he said, stressing that Egypt did not distinguish or discriminate between (Iraq s) groups and communities.
Kuwaiti Shiite MPs and clerics also criticized the comments about their loyalty to Iran and demanded an official apology. We are not begging for certificates of loyalty to our countries from Mubarak or others. These are irresponsible statements … and only serve to incite sectarian rifts, MP Hassan Jowhar said. Nothing can satisfy Shiites except a clear official apology from President Mubarak, Jowhar told a press conference in parliament attended by three of five Kuwaiti Shiite MPs.
Mubarak had warned that civil war had started in Iraq, where three consecutive days of bombings killed about 100 people, inflaming sectarian tensions. The caution came as Shiite leaders were to meet on Sunday in another attempt to break an impasse over the prime minister, hoping to pave the way for a unity government many see as the only way to avert open civil war. It s not on the threshold (of civil war). It s pretty much started. There are Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and those types which come from Asia, Mubarak said in an interview aired on Saturday on pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Arabiya.
Mubarak said that the large Shiite Muslim presence in Arab states were more loyal to Iran than their own countries, echoing accusations made by his fellow Sunnis in Iraq about their country s Shiite leaders. Hours earlier, a car bomb killed at least six Shiite pilgrims and wounded 16 in the town of Musayib, south of Baghdad, police said, the latest in a wave of attacks that raised fresh fears of full-blown communal conflict. Enraged town residents at the scene of the blast threw stones at U.S. troops in Humvees who fired warning shots in the air. One man also blamed fractious Iraqi leaders, who are struggling to form a government four months after elections. This is because of the Americans. It is their doing while (our) politicians just sit in their seats of power. Is this what they call a democracy? he yelled as people picked up thick pieces of shrapnel. Powerful Shiite leader Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim had urged his followers to stand firm against what he called an Al-Qaeda campaign to ignite sectarian civil war with bombings like one on Friday that killed at least 70 people. That triple suicide bombing at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad, the biggest single suicide attack on a Shiite target since November 2005, raised fresh fears of a full-blown communal conflict, with the United States, Britain and the United Nations quickly urging Iraqi unity. Hakim s speech, delivered on the anniversary of the execution of top Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr and his sister by Saddam Hussein, called for unity between Iraq s main Shiite, Kurdish and Arab Sunni communities. But he also reminded majority Shiites of their decades of suffering under Saddam s Sunni-dominated regime and urged them to resist attempts by the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, to plunge the country into open civil war. (Sunni) militants and insurgents want to return Iraq to Saddam s formula, said Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party in the ruling Shiite Alliance. This nation will not fall into the trap of sectarian war that is being pursued by Zarqawi s groups. Mubarak called Iraq a semi-destroyed country and blamed the current unrest on ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
If Saddam was fair in his actions, this would never [have] happened, Mubarak said.
Sectarian tensions have been rising since the bombing of a Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 touched off reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. The latest bombs provided more proof that Iraqi leaders, deadlocked over a government, are unable to tackle the bloodshed which is consuming the country. The United States and Britain have been stepping up pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a government in the hope that the political process could undermine a Sunni insurgency and ease sectarian violence. Hakim s Alliance is under intense pressure to replace Ibrahim Al-Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister to break the deadlock over postwar Iraq s first full-term government. But Jaafari, who is currently serving as prime minister, refuses to step aside despite calls, even from within his own alliance, and from Sunni and Kurdish leaders who say he has failed in office. Mubarak said of the Arab countries around Iraq: There are Shiites in all of those states in very big percentages, and the loyalty of those Shiites is to Iran, most of them are loyal to Iran. Their loyalty is not to their particular countries. The Egyptian leader warned against an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal. Now? It would be a disaster … It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up not just in Iraq, but in many places. Agencies
