The Iraqi foreign minister said Tuesday that he believes his country has averted a civil war after five years of "tears and blood," and warned that a quick U.S. troop withdrawal would be disastrous. Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that mistakes had been made by all sides but Iraq has reached a turning point.
"These past five years I think were full of hopes and promises but also of tears and blood ... and we've gone through a very, very difficult transformation," said Zebari. He noted that the Iraqis had established a government and gained freedoms that were absent under nearly three decades of Saddam Hussein's rule.
"At the same time divisions have deepened, unfortunately," he said during an interview. "But ... I think we averted a sectarian war. We passed the possibility of a civil war."
Zebari said it was premature to set a timeframe for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, noting that negotiations on a long-term security agreement with the United States to replace a U.N. mandate had just begun. He voiced concern about growing weariness by the American public with the war, and promises by rival Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to start withdrawing forces quickly if elected.
Meanwhile, Iraq's main Sunni bloc boycotted a conference Tuesday aimed at reconciling the nation's sectarian groups. Members of the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front said they would not participate in the conference until Shiite lawmakers address their political demands. They say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has failed to free detainees not charged with specific crimes, has not disbanded Shiite militias and has not sufficiently included Sunni lawmakers in decision-making on security issues.
"How we can attend a reconciliation meeting?" said Saleem Abdullah, a spokesman for the Sunni front. "There are many points that are still not fulfilled."
Al-Maliki opened the reconciliation meeting. In his opening statement, al-Maliki said reconciliation was not intended to harm the interests of any group but was "a boat that saves us and takes us to safety." "From the first day, we said national reconciliation is not a political slogan, but a complete strategical vision to reconstruct Iraq," al-Maliki said.
