TEHRAN, Jan 5: An influential Iranian cleric said on Friday the United States wanted to use Saddam Hussein’s execution to stoke tensions between Shias and Sunnis. A mobile phone video of Shia Iraqi officials taunting the former Sunni president on the gallows has inflamed sectarian passions inside Iraq, already on the brink of civil war, and sparked growing outrage from Sunni Arabs.

Saddam, who was executed on Saturday, was tried in a US-sponsored court but the US military says it had no role in the hanging and would have handled it differently.

“America’s method is to start sectarian differences,” Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers in a sermon broadcast on state radio.

“They want to use Saddam’s death to portray divisions among Shia and Sunnis. Dictators have no religion. Saddam was not a Sunni and he did not believe in any religion,” he said.

“Saddam did not kill just Shias.”

“Do not doubt that the enemy’s plan in Iraq and Iran is to inflame differences among Shias and Sunnis. In Iran and Iraq, for years, Shias and Sunnis have been living together peacefully,” said Khatami, a member of a powerful clerical body, the Assembly of Experts and a regular leader of Friday prayers in the capital, Tehran.

Officials in predominantly Iran have said the former president’s execution was a victory for Iraqis.—Reuters