NAJAF, Oct 22: Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa said on Saturday his mission to foster dialogue and ease sectarian tension in Iraq had won crucial backing from the top Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani.

After speaking with the revered leader in this holy city south of Baghdad, Mr Mussa said: “I obtained the blessing and support of Ayatollah Sistani, which made me glad.”

It was an unprecedented meeting between an Arab League chief and the top Shia religious figure in Iraq, and came three days after former president Saddam Hussein went on trial for crimes against humanity.

“We examined Iraq’s Arab dimension, its unity and all its negative aspects,” Mr Mussa told reporters.

Sunnis in Iraq fear that Shias and Kurds will dilute the country’s Arab character and control its oil wealth.

The Arab League chief, who has proposed to host a national reconciliation conference at a later date, had already met the pre-eminent Sunni religious body, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, and several members of the government.

The three-day visit was Mr Mussa’s first since the US-led invasion in March 2003, and followed widespread criticism that the League has been slow to help rebuild the country.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said he had no objection to the proposed national dialogue, but that it must exclude ‘terrorists who have shed blood and high-ranking Baathists’ from Saddam’s ousted government.

Another political leader courted by Mr Mussa, Saleh Motlaq of the Sunni group the Council for a National Dialogue, said he and 80 other leaders of all political persuasion had been invited to Egypt for preliminary reconciliation talks. —AFP