BAGHDAD, Oct 20: Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who has said Iraq is on the verge of civil war, held talks with Iraqi leaders on Thursday on a tough mission to promote national reconciliation in a country ravaged by violence.
On his first post-war visit to Iraq, the former Egyptian diplomat met Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and was also expected to hold talks with President Jalal Talabani and leading Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
“We spoke about the new Iraq and the specific mission of the head of the Arab League ... in the framework of a national dialogue and national Iraqi reconciliation,” Moussa told a news conference after his talks with Jaafari.
“We are working so this will be the basis for Iraq’s future.”
For security reasons, the 22-member league had not announced the timing of the secretary-general’s visit, his first to Iraq since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
When a league delegation visited Iraq earlier this month, gunmen attacked its convoy and killed three police escorts.
Moussa arrived at a sensitive time for Iraq, which watched its former president Saddam Hussein go on trial on Wednesday on charges of crimes against humanity connected to the killing of 148 Shias from the village of Dujail in the 1980s.
Iraqi and US officials hope the high-profile trial will help Iraqis bury their past and ease a Sunnis’ insurgency led by Saddam’s former agents and Muslim militants.
An Oct. 15 referendum on a constitution backed by Iraq’s new Shia and Kurdish leaders and fiercely opposed by Sunnis is expected to pass, raising fears of an intensified campaign of suicide bombings and guerilla attacks by Sunni insurgents.
The Electoral Commission, which says it may issue results in a day or two, said it had received about 80 complaints, most of them relatively minor; some Sunni leaders have alleged fraud.
Iraqi security forces have arrested a nephew of Saddam on suspicion of financing insurgents, National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said on Thursday.
Yasser Sabawi was captured in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit on Wednesday as residents protested to mark the beginning of the ousted president’s trial, Rubaie told Reuters.
“He is one of the people who fund terrorism and we believe there is strong evidence that he is one of the channels that brings in funds used to finance the terrorist operations in the north and the northeast of the country.”
Moussa has criticised what he says is the lack of any clear strategy to reconcile Iraq’s rival communities, warning that civil war could erupt at any moment.
Arab states such as conservative Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia have complained that non-Arab Shia Iran is gaining influence in Iraq to the detriment of regional stability.
Some Iraqis have criticised the Arab League for neglecting their country since the war and for failing to stop young Arabs coming to fight in Iraq or Saddam loyalists sending money; US military data showed more than 300 foreigners had been captured since April as guerilla suspects, the bulk of them Arabs.
Saddam won a 40-day reprieve to hone his defence after pleading not guilty to crimes against humanity in a court set up in the former regional headquarters of his Baath party.
The three hours of televised courtroom exchanges, during which the ousted Iraqi dictator harangued the Kurdish judge and tussled with his guards, gripped the nation and the wider world.
Thursday’s newspapers were filled with coverage of Saddam, who was wearing a dark suit and carrying a worn copy of the Koran as he stepped into court to join seven other defendants.
“The people are victorious over a tyrant,” read a front-page banner headline in Al Bayaan newspaper.—Reuters
BAGHDAD, Oct 20: Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who has said Iraq is on the verge of civil war, held talks with Iraqi leaders on Thursday on a tough mission to promote national reconciliation in a country ravaged by violence.
