/ 26 April 2006

Iraq leaders united against al-Zarqawi battle call

Iraq’s leadership, including the Sunni Arab camp involved in efforts to forge a unity government, on Wednesday jointly condemned the defiant battle cry from al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“Al-Zarqawi has launched a genocide against the Iraqi people, branding the Shi’ites as rawafidh [rejectionists], the Kurds as traitors, and the Sunni Arabs as renegades,” said President Jalal Talabani .

“The Iraqi people hate his brutal crimes and he is now isolated,” Talabani, who is a Kurd, told a news conference at which he was flanked by vice-presidents Adel Abdel Mehdi, a Shi’ite, and Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni.

“The best way to deal with the al-Zarqawi phenomenon is through national reconciliation and restoring security and stability,” the president said, a day after the Jordanian-born militant issued new threats in a videotape.

Newly-designated vice-president al-Hashemi defended his participation in the political process as the best means to end the violence plaguing Iraq.

“We believe that the interests of Iraq demand this participation so as to normalise the situation and impose order by force,” said the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

“We are nothing more than agents for peace, for a people suffering from injustice and who we intend to defend,” he said. “There is a necessity to be part of the political process and there is no turning back on this.”

Al-Zarqawi — Iraq’s most wanted man with a $25-million United States bounty on his head — voiced new defiance of Washington and the new leaders in his first reported video message, posted late on Tuesday on the Internet.

US commanders said they had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the recording and vowed to press their manhunt for the al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq.

“By God, America will be defeated in Iraq,” said the man who has been blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in the three-year-old insurgency. “America will be chased out of the Land of Two Rivers [Iraq], defeated and humiliated.”

A bearded, beefy al-Zarqawi, with a black scarf wrapped around his head, was shown gripping a machine gun and meeting with fighters briefing him on events in the western Iraqi town of Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold.

“Beware those of you who join these collaborator agencies — the [Iraqi] army and police. By God, all they will get from us is a sharp sword,” he said, in the footage which was dated to last Friday.

A US military spokesperson said the timing of the message appeared to be linked to efforts to form a national-unity government, following the designation last week of Jawad Maliki as prime minister to end a four-month political deadlock.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, flew in for surprise visits to Baghdad on Wednesday for talks with the new Iraqi leadership.

“I think al-Zarqawi knows very well that … this government is representative of the broad Iraqi populace,” Rice told the accompanying press.

“It is a government of national unity and it is one that may be the greatest threat to efforts to separate the Iraqis and turn them against one another.

“In fact, the answer to the al-Zarqawi video is not anything that the US is saying, it is what the Iraqis are saying; it is having formed a government of national unity despite all the threats and all the violence,” she said. — AFP