The comments by Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party....
in an interview with The News Agency that Dare Not be Named marked one of his strongest warnings yet about the turmoil that toppling Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Leveler of Latakia...
could create in the Middle East.
"If the world does not agree to support a peaceful solution through dialogue ... then I see no light at the end of the tunnel.
"Neither the opposition nor the regime can finish each other off," he said. "If the opposition is victorious, there will be a civil war in Leb, divisions in Jordan and a sectarian war in Iraq."
Maliki's warning comes as his government confronts growing tensions of its own between the Shiite majority and an increasingly restive Sunni minority nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Fighting in Syria has sharp sectarian overtones, with predominantly Sunni rebels battling a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Assad's regional allies are Shiite Iran and Hizbullah.
Al-Maliki too is a Shiite and his sect dominates Iraq's government.
His comments reflect growing fears by many Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere that Sunnis would come to dominate Syria should Assad be pushed from power.