Iraqi assembly lashes Arab reaction to stampede

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament savaged fellow Arab
states on Sunday for failing to mourn 1,000 Shi’ite pilgrims
crushed in Baghdad last week, while some had found time — and
money — to help Americans hit by Hurricane Katrina.

With the chamber, dominated by majority Shi’ite Muslims and
non-Arab Kurds, clad largely in funereal black, the undertone
of sectarian and ethnic tension with the U.S.-backed
government’s Sunni Muslim-ruled Arab neighbours was evident.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari stepped into the fray later
by holding up the sympathy expressed by Iraqi Sunnis for the
disaster during a Shi’ite religious festival as a lesson to
Arab governments whose relations with Baghdad remain cool.

“Qatar felt sorry for those who were killed by Katrina,
which is indeed sad, and sent them $100 million. Other
countries did so too. But why is it that the Iraqi people are
getting killed everyday but none of these countries says a
word,” Jalal al-Deen al-Sagheer, a cleric and prominent Shi’ite
member, said.

“Why would Spain and other countries send us their
condolences while these so called Arab countries did not even
say a word?” he told the National Assembly, before adding that
in any case words of sympathy from Arabs states would be
hollow.

“We know they would be lying because they are liars.”

A number of other speakers from the Shi’ite-led coalition
voiced similar sentiments.

The outspoken language echoed criticisms from Iraq of
fellow Arab governments’ failures to halt Islamic militants
flowing into the country or staunch funding for the Sunni
insurgency against the administration that replaced Saddam
Hussein.

Other Arab leaders have indicated some unease at the close
relationship the new Iraqi authorities have with the United
States and their ties with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran.

The Arab League, which Iraq helped found, criticised a
draft constitution which, in deference mainly to Kurdish
concerns, has hedged the extent to which Iraq is part of the
“Arab nation.”

SECTARIAN BRIDGE-BUILDING

Iraqis were shocked and devastated by the stampede on a
bridge over the river Tigris in which 1,005 people were
confirmed to have died, the greatest loss of Iraqi life in a
single incident since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

In a country riven by sectarian tension, grief and shock
has brought both some Sunnis and Shi’ites closer — a point
Jaafari stressed in a later news conference and contrasted with
what he said was the attitude of neighbouring states:

“What Iraqis have shown … is a transparent, great and
clear message to some Arab countries who did not stand by us.”

State-run Iraqiya television also orchestrated an angry
response to the Arab reaction; among other items, it
interviewed children who expressed their sadness over the
response:

“Where are our smiles? We are deprived of them,” chanted
one of the four Iraqi children on television.

“Where is your conscience you Arabs? Has it died?”

President Jalal Talabani’s and Jaafari’s offices have said
they had received condolences from across the globe, though it
seems few came in from the Arab world.

“If a whore were killed and had some link to one of their
fat-bellied countries they would have erected their funeral
tents,” said Sagheer, who wore his white clerical turban.

“I call on the foreign minister to consider this disaster a
turning point in Iraq’s policy toward Arab nations.”

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald)