The United States ambassador to Iraq warned Iraqi politicians on Monday they risk a loss of American support if they do not establish a genuine national unity government, saying the US will not invest its resources in institutions run by sectarians.
Meanwhile, at least 24 people, including an American soldier, were killed by bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere. Two Macedonian contractors were freed by kidnappers four days after they were abducted in Basra, a British official said without giving further details.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad delivered his blunt warning during a rare press conference after signs that talks on a new government following the December elections were not going well because of sharp differences among the country’s Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties.
Failure to establish a unity government that includes a strong role for Sunni Arabs would fail to undermine the Sunni-dominated insurgency and throw into question US plans for a phased withdrawal of the 138 000 American troops here.
Khalilzad said that overcoming the sectarian and ethnic divide requires a government of national unity, which is ”the difference between what exists now and the next government”. The outgoing government is dominated by Shi’ites and Kurds.
Khalilzad told the Shi’ites that the key defence and interior ministries must be in the hands of people ”who are non-sectarian, broadly acceptable and who are not tied to militias”.
The ambassador reminded the Iraqis that the US has spent billions to build up Iraq’s police and army, and ”we are not going to invest the resources of the American people and build forces that are run by people who are sectarian”.
Accusations
Sunni Arabs accuse the Shi’ite-led interior ministry of human rights abuses and using Shi’ite militias against Sunni civilians under the cover of fighting the insurgency. Shi’ites deny the charge and say they must control security forces to protect Shi’ites against attacks by Sunni religious extremists.
Khalilzad cited the need for compromise, especially in the defence and interior ministries. He said ministers in those posts must be those ”who are non-sectarian, broadly accepted and who are not tied to militias”.
Otherwise, he warned that ”Iraq faces the risk of warlordism that Afghanistan went through for a period”. Khalilzad was born in Afghanistan and served as US envoy there.
Several Shi’ite parties are believed to control armed militias, some of which date back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s when many Iraqi Shi’ites fled to Shi’ite-dominated Iran. On the other hand, most of the insurgents are Sunnis. Kurds maintain the biggest armed force — the peshmerga — which they maintain is the legitimate security force of their autonomous government in the north.
Shi’ites and Kurds dominate the ranks of the Iraqi army and police, although the US is stepping up efforts to recruit Sunnis into those institutions.
‘Unacceptable’
A prominent Shi’ite politician, Jalaladin al-Saghir, said Khalilzad’s comments were ”unacceptable” and constituted interference in the affairs of a sovereign state.
”We all want a national unity government and the US ambassador is no more eager than we are to reach such a government,” al-Saghir said.
Al-Saghir said the Americans installed former members of Saddam Hussein’s party in the interior and defence ministries and ”Shi’ites are upset about this”.
”It is the Americans who push toward sectarianism by their ever-changing points of view,” he said. ”We feel uneasy about some of the US agenda.”
A coalition of Shi’ite religious parties won 130 of the 275 seats in the new Parliament. Although they have agreed in principle to a unity government, Shi’ite leaders insist their showing in the December 15 election gives them the democratic right to control key levers of the new government.
A Kurdish alliance won 53 seats and two Sunni Arab blocs together took 55 seats — a major increase over Sunni representation in the outgoing Parliament.
Iraqis have until mid-May to form a new government, but US and Iraqi officials warn the process could take longer because of political differences.
Control of the security ministries is only one of several major differences standing in the way of a political agreement. Shi’ites insist that Sunni Arab parties work actively against the insurgency. Sunnis insist on drawing a difference between ”legitimate resistance” to foreign occupation and terrorism that targets civilians.
Shiites, who comprise about 60% of the population, are reluctant to surrender power won at the ballot box to Sunni Arabs, who dominated political life here during Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Sunni Arabs insist that programmes to purge Saddam’s supporters from public life be limited and not used to deprive Sunnis of a future in Iraq.
Kurds zealously guard the self-rule they have enjoyed since 1991, and many of them want to expand their autonomous region to oil centres around Kirkuk, claimed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen.
Violence
As the country faces political deadlock, violence rages.
The US command said the American soldier was killed on Monday by a roadside bomb south-east of Karbala, about 80km south-east of Baghdad. The soldier’s name was not released pending notification of kin.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt on a bus on Monday in the Shi’ite district of Kazamiyah, killing 12 people and injuring 15, police said. Earlier, a bomb exploded next to tea stalls near Liberation Square, killing at least four day labourers and wounding 14, police said.
In Mosul, 360km north-west of Baghdad, a suicide attacker blew himself up in a restaurant packed with police officers eating breakfast, killing at least five people and wounding 21, including 10 police officers, officials said.
Two more civilians died when a car bomb exploded in Madain, south-east of Baghdad, police said. Eleven people, including three women, were injured.
The freed Macedonians worked for the Ecolog cleaning company at Basra International airport and were abducted on Thursday. Their kidnappers had demanded a $1-million ransom from their employers, but it was unclear if any money had been paid.
The British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed their released.
More than 250 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, including American reporter Jill Carroll, who was abducted on January 7 in Baghdad. At least 39 have been killed. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press reporters Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Bushra Juhi and Sameer N Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad