BAGHDAD, Feb 20: The US ambassador to Iraq on Monday warned politicians that Washington would not fund security forces run by ministries with a sectarian bias, urging the formation of a national unity government.

Zalmay Khalilzad’s stark warning came against a background of increasing bickering between Iraq’s factions as they seek to form a government in the wake of the Dec 15 general election.

“The fundamental problem in Iraq is one of sectarianism and ethnic conflict,” Mr Khalilzad told a news briefing.

“This polarisation along ethnic and sectarian lines affects every aspect of what’s going on. The various communities need to come together in a national compact and that can be achieved first through the establishment of a national unity government,” he said.

The United States is investing millions of dollars into the country’s new security forces and ‘we’re not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian’, he said.

He went on to issue a veiled warning to competing factions that the United States did not wish to see ministers perceived as sectarian occupying key posts within the security ministries.

The ministers of the interior and of defence have to ‘broadly acceptable’ to all communities in Iraq, he said, adding that they should also be ‘non sectarian and have no ties to militias’.

Leaders of the Sunni community have repeatedly accused militias loyal to the Shia community of abuse and extra-judicial killings, and have alleged that some interior ministry forces are involved in ‘death squads’.

Mr Khalilzad said he has pressed the outgoing government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari for a ‘serious’ investigation into allegations of abuse of prisoners and of sectarian killings.

Speaking of the recent arrest of some policemen said to be involved in a ‘death squad’, the ambassador said two had confessed to their part in seeking to ‘kill someone because of his sect’.

On the setting up of a government, Mr Khalilzad noted that while it was important one should be set up as soon as possible, notably to help undermine the resistance, it was equally important that factions get the balance right. —AFP