Iraq leaders in new reconciliation bid
03-18-2008, 03h55
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Iraqi Sunni fighters allied with US forces against Al-Qaeda stand guard in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. Iraq's feuding sectarian factions were set to meet on Tuesday in a new bid to resolve their differences amid international concern that insufficient progress has been made on the path to reconciliation.
(AFP/File)
Iraq's feuding sectarian factions were set to meet on Tuesday in a new bid to resolve their differences amid international concern that insufficient progress has been made on the path to reconciliation.
The two-day national unity conference comes just two days before the fifth anniversary of the launch of the US-led invasion and with one of its chief architects, US Vice President Dick Cheney, in Iraq for talks with the rival leaders.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the conference aimed to achieve "security, reconstruction and complete sovereignty".
"Different political leaders will be present and the conference will aim to activate the role of different groups in the political process for positive contribution and national reconciliation," he said.
The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has come under mounting pressure from both the United States and the United Nations to show a greater sense of urgency about using the window of opportunity created by falling levels of sectarian violence to promote reconciliation.
The top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told the Washington Post "no one" in the US and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation".
Petraeus has been overseeing a strategy -- bolstered by a "surge" of some 30,000 additional US troops -- that aims to rein in the violence to give Iraqi leaders the political space to pass a package of legislation intended to woo insurgent and militia groups back into mainstream politics.
But key elements of the package remain stalled in parliament amid continued factional feuding.
It is the second attempt by Maliki to defuse the sectarian bloodshed that has gripped the country since suspected Sunni militants blew up a revered Shiite shrine in February 2006.
In December that year, the Shiite premier convened a meeting of the rival factions at which he tried to reach out to former members of the ousted Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein.
Maliki called on former members of Saddam's outlawed Baath party to rejoin the political process and former members of his armed forces to abandon the insurgency and join Iraq's new security forces.
Since then, Maliki's government claims to have brought hundreds of former Baathists back into public life and last month parliament approved a law rehabilitating even quite senior former members of the party.
But critics say he has not moved fast enough to capitalise on the security improvements achieved in the second half of last year.
In February, the death toll among Iraqis rose by 33 percent on January, reversing a six-month trend of reduced violence.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura urged Iraqi leaders to seize the chance for reconcilation before it was too late.
"This is the window of opportunity for Iraq... It does not last long," he warned.
AI
