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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Meeting with Saddam supporters |
| 2004-11-25 |
| THE Iraqi government has agreed to meet outside the country with Saddam Hussein supporters to try to convince them to abandon the insurgency, a senior Iraqi official said today. In a bid to draw Sunni support for the January elections, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said an Iraqi delegation would meet in Amman, Jordan, with "a number of political opposition movements", including some former Saddam Hussein supporters on the "most wanted list", to convince them to abandon the insurgency and take part in the election. No date for the meeting was announced, and Mr Zebari did not say who would attend, although he ruled out contacts with "terrorists". It appeared the contacts, which he said were encouraged by Arab governments, were aimed at trying to strike a deal with "nationalist" opposition groups and dividing them from religious extremists such as al-Qaeda-linked terror boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Sunni politicians have urged that the elections be delayed. Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and a member of the Iraqi National Council, said delaying the ballot by three months or more would enable political leaders to convince Sunni clerics and others to abandon their boycott call. "I think that it will not be in the interest of anyone to let large segments of the Iraqi population be completely left out of the political process," Mr Pachachi, leader of the Independent Democrats party, said. Seven other Sunni parties also demanded a delay in the election, saying they want guarantees that they won't be marginalised in any new government expected to be dominated by rival Shiites. Many Sunni Arabs fear the Shiites, estimated to form about 60 per cent of Iraq's nearly 26 million people, will dominate the new government. Sunni Arabs make up an estimated 20 per cent of Iraq's total population and form the core of the insurgency. Mr Pachachi said if many Sunnis boycott the elections, the result would be an "illegitimate" parliament with "no guarantee that the security situation will improve". Iraq's Electoral Commission today extended by another week the deadline for registering political parties in Sunni Arab areas where bloodshed is hampering preparations for elections. In an apparent bid to head off a possible Sunni boycott, parties in Iraq's third largest city of Mosul, the Anbar province that includes Fallujah, and the Salaheddin province that includes Samarra and Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, now have until December 2 to sign up. |
| Posted by:tipper |