Iraq Shi’ite ayatollah wants US envoy sacked

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A leading Iraqi Shi’ite cleric on
Friday demanded the United States sack its envoy, heading a
push for a unity government, accusing him of siding with fellow
Sunni Muslims in the sectarian conflict gripping the country.

Ayatollah Mohammed al-Yacoubi’s call at Friday prayers came
as political leaders held their latest round of negotiations to
form a new government, months after parliamentary elections in
December, as sectarian bloodshed rises.

In a sermon read out at mosques for Friday prayers, Yacoubi
said Washington had underestimated the conflict between
Shi’ites and the once dominant Sunni Arab minority, which many
fear threatens to trigger a civil war.

“By this, they are either misled by reports, which lack
objectivity and credibility, submitted to the United States by
their sectarian ambassador to Iraq … or they are denying this
fact,” Yacoubi said in the message, later issued as a
statement.

“It (the United States) should not yield to terrorist
blackmail and should not be deluded or misled by spiteful
sectarians. It should replace its ambassador to Iraq if it
wants to protect itself from further failures.”

URGENT EFFORTS

After the imam of Baghdad’s Rahman mosque read that line,
worshippers chanted “Allahu Akbar” — God is Greatest.

Iraq’s political leaders held their latest round of talks
on forming a new government on Friday, under mounting pressure
at home and from the United States to form a government of
national unity to end the sectarian violence and avert civil
war.

Afghan-born ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the highest
ranking Muslim in the U.S. administration has spearheaded
urgent U.S. efforts to press politicians to agree on a
government embracing Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds to avert a
sectarian civil war.

The Shi’ite-Sunni bloodshed has worsened dramatically since
a major Shi’ite shrine in the city of Samarra was bombed on
February 22, sparking a wave of violence and poisoning the
political atmosphere during the crucial negotiations.

Hundreds have died since and more than 30,000 people have
fled their homes as Shi’ite and Sunni militias seek to cleanse
their neighbourhoods.

Yacoubi is the spiritual guide for the Fadhila party, one
of the smaller but still influential components of the dominant
Islamist Alliance bloc. He is not part of the senior clerical
council around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf.

Nonetheless, Shi’ite politicians said his comments
reflected widespread disenchantment among them with the
ambassador.

“It’s a very good statement,” one senior official in the
Alliance, not from Fadhila, said of Yacoubi’s sermon.

Khalilzad, who has been in Iraq 10 months, has been
criticised by Shi’ite leaders, who openly resent his
championing of efforts to tempt Sunnis away from armed revolt
into a coalition government.

Yacoubi said: “The American ambassador and the tyrants of
the Arab states are giving political support to those parties
who provide political cover for the terrorists.”

SAMARRA BOMBING

Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim accused Khalilzad last
month of provoking the Samarra bombing by making remarks
critical of “sectarian” tendencies among the Shi’ite
leadership.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has also criticised U.S.
“interference” this week in Iraq’s political process. Jaafari’s
nomination to a second term by the Alliance is a major sticking
point in talks with Sunnis and ethnic Kurds on a government.

Shi’ite politicians say Khalilzad has delivered messages
from U.S. President George W. Bush to both Hakim and Sistani in
the past week urging them to drop Jaafari, whose nomination was
secured with the support of Iranian-backed cleric and militia
leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. diplomats deny taking sides in the issue.

Khalilzad is now planning talks with Iran, Washington’s old
enemy in the region, to try to ease the crisis in Iraq. The
United States accuses Shi’ite Iran of fomenting violence.

Politicians have been debating how to form a new government
since parliamentary elections in December, but appear to have
made little real progress.

There is also haggling over a Sunni demand for a security
veto and the issue of who gets what job remains wide open.

(Additional reporting by Hiba Moussa, Seif Fouad, Terry
Friel and Alastair Macdonald)