JEDDAH, Dec 30: The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called for calm in Iraq on Saturday after the hanging of Saddam Hussein and urged Muslim clerics to implement a pact banning the shedding of Muslim blood.

In a statement issued at its headquarters in Jeddah, the

57-member OIC said its secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu “appealed to the Iraqi people to stay calm” following the execution of the former president.

He also called on prominent Iraqi clerics to “implement the Mecca Document ... by urging the Iraqi people to remain united”, the statement said.

That document, hammered out by 29 Iraqi Shia and Sunni clerics at an OIC-sponsored meeting in the Makkah in October, called for a halt to sectarian bloodletting in Iraq.

Though it stipulated that “spilling Muslim blood is forbidden”, the Makkah Document went unheeded in Iraq, where Shia-Sunni killings continued unabated.—AFP