BAGHDAD, March 7: The United States conceded on Tuesday that the occupation of Iraq had opened the Pandora’s box and the country could yet descend into civil war. “We have opened the Pandora’s box,” US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“The question is, what is the way forward?” he asked, speaking two weeks after the bombing of a major shrine in Samarra sparked days of bloodshed that killed hundreds.
“If another incident (occurs), Iraq is really vulnerable,” the envoy, who is at the heart of talks to forge a coalition of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, said. “The way forward ... is an effort to build bridges across communities.”
Mr Khalilzad said in one of the gloomiest US assessments to date: “There’s a vacuum of authority and ... a lot of distrust.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the 2003 invasion, said: “There’s always been a potential for a civil war.” He blamed the media for ‘exaggerating’ Iraq’s problems.
“It was held together through force and viciousness,” he said of the rule of Saddam Hussein.
President George Bush says an inclusive Iraqi government can bring stability and, along with the formation of Iraq’s new armed forces, can allow him to start withdrawing troops.
The recent violence has jeopardised that plan.
A few days before US military commanders are expected to put recommendations to Mr Bush for future troop levels, Mr Khalilzad warned that pulling out too soon would risk a regional conflict that would make his native Afghanistan ‘look like child’s play’.
SUSPICION: The assassination of the top Iraqi general in Baghdad on Monday by a sniper who apparently knew exactly which car door he would open in a 14-vehicle convoy prompted an investigation.
Iraqi generals said it proved the US-trained army was infiltrated by militants who could turn on fellow soldiers in the event of a conflict with sectarian and ethnic militias.
GOVT FORMATION: Efforts to forge a grand coalition following an election in December that Washington hailed as a triumph of democracy have stumbled over Sunni and Kurdish refusal to accept that Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari, a Shia, should stay on.
His critics say he has failed to bring security or prosperity during the year in which he has served as interim premier.
Mr Jaafari, as ever, appeared untroubled on Tuesday. The soft-spoken doctor told an hour-long media briefing that touched only briefly on Iraq’s political crisis that the issue was being discussed in a ‘civilised and democratic way’.
Angered by the opposition but divided over its response, the various parties in the Alliance asked President Jalal Talabani for a few days delay in Sunday’s planned opening of parliament.
But senior officials, including the outgoing speaker, said that was unlikely because March 12 is a constitutional deadline. Sunday’s session, however, may conduct essentially no business — not even the election of a new speaker demanded by the law.
Mr Talabani, a Kurd, would meet all parties on Thursday to agree a plan, officials said. One way out of the impasse may be to conclude a brief sitting on Sunday without a formal adjournment, allowing the ‘first’ session of the new parliament to be resumed at a later day, senior political sources said.
It would leave Iraq, already facing its deepest crisis since the US invasion, without a full-term government. Senior Iraqi politicians say privately that their country, created by Britain in 1918, faces break-up into three warring states.
