U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met Iraq's Shi'ite-led government
on Wednesday after his top general in the country told him Shi'ite "death
squads" were fuelling a surge in communal bloodshed.
Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld speaks during a news conference in Kabul July 11, 2006.
[Reuters] |
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told lawmakers Iraq had one "last
chance" to avert a slide to all-out civil war.
Several hours after he spoke, clashes erupted between gunmen armed with
rocket-propelled grenades and police and residents in Um al-Maalif, a mainly
Shi'ite neighbourhood in southern Baghdad. Police said there were a number of
casualties.
Soon after Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a
restaurant, killing seven people, police said. Security forces also found the
bodies of 24 bus drivers who had been kidnapped earlier in a town north of
Baghdad.
Major General Ghassan al-Bawi, the police chief of Diyala province, blamed
insurgents for the kidnappings and said they were aimed at "inflaming" tensions
between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Ten of the drivers were Sunni, the rest Shi'ite, he
said.
Maliki told parliament Iraqi security forces had defeated a coordinated
attempt by gunmen to occupy Baghdad districts west of the Tigris. Gunmen have
fought in the streets and battled security forces in several districts in the
past few days. Scores of people, mainly civilians, have been killed.
Maliki said a national reconciliation plan he has promoted was Iraq's "last
chance" to stem the violence.
"If it fails, I don't know what the destiny of Iraq will be," he told the
assembled Iraqi lawmakers, including representatives of the minority Sunni
community who had staged a week-long boycott in protest at the kidnapping of a
colleague.
The U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said Sunni militants in al
Qaeda were stoking the sectarian violence that pits majority Shi'ites against
the once-dominant Sunni minority.
"What we are seeing now as a counter to that are death squads, primarily from
Shi'ite extremist groups that are retaliating against civilians," he told
reporters.
"So you have both sides now attacking civilians. And that is what has caused
the recent spike in violence here in Baghdad."
U.S. commanders have often been careful not to label gunmen as Shi'ites,
although many of the recent attacks in Baghdad neighbourhoods have been blamed
by Sunnis and police on the Mehdi army militia controlled by Shi'ite cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr.
Sadr and his followers vigorously deny the accusations.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE
U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said sectarian violence was now the main
challenge to the security forces, overtaking the three- -year-old Sunni
insurgency as the biggest source of instability.
"A year ago, terrorism and the insurgency against the coalition and the Iraqi
security forces were the principal sources of instability," Khalilzad said on
Tuesday. "Violent sectarianism is now the main challenge."
As a result, the U.S. military is adapting its tactics to focus more on
containing the sectarian violence, but Rumsfeld cautioned that the "solution is
not military".
"We're at a point now when the security situation depends as much on the
reconciliation process and on the strengthening of (government) ministries,"
Rumsfeld told reporters.
Maliki has offered talks with some Sunni rebels and a limited amnesty under
his 24-point plan in a bid to draw Sunnis, the seat of the insurgency, closer
into the political process.
Rumsfeld's trip also comes amid growing anti-war sentiment among the U.S.
public in a congressional election year. A 129,000-strong American force is
serving in Iraq more than three years into the war in which about 2,500 U.S.
troops have died.
The defence secretary said it was too early to talk about adjusting U.S.
troop levels. "We haven't gotten to that point."
Rumsfeld said he did not plan to discuss a series of inquiries in which U.S.
soldiers are suspected of killing Iraqi civilians. These would be handled by the
U.S. military, he said.
The cases have led Maliki to call for a review of foreign soldiers' immunity
from Iraqi courts.
