Iraq's defense minister attacked Syria on Sunday for allowing fighters train in its territory and warned that an escalation of violence in Iraq will spill over into neighboring states. "We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into Iraq to bring destruction and killings," Saadoun al-Dulaimi said after meeting Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran.
"Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes, no neighboring capital will be saved," al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press.
On his part, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said an immediate pullout of foreign troops from his country would be "catastrophic", in an interview to be broadcast Sunday. He also warned that such a move would lead to civil war with damaging consequences for the entire region.
Talabani told Britain's ITV television an immediate withdrawal "would lead to a kind of civil war and... we will lose what we have done for liberating Iraq from the worst kind of dictatorship. "Instead of having a democratic, stable Iraq, we will have a civil war in Iraq, we will have troubles in Iraq (and they) will affect all the Middle East."
