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Sistani backs Iraq reconciliation mission

BAGHDAD: Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa said Saturday he had the support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for the League’s mission to foster national dialogue and ease sectarian tension in Iraq.

After speaking with Sistani, the revered senior Shiite cleric in this holy city south of Baghdad, Mussa said: “I obtained the blessing and support of Ayatollah Sistani, which made me glad.”

It was the first meeting ever between an Arab League chief and the top Shiite religious figure in Iraq, and came three days after former dictator Saddam Hussein went on trial for crimes against humanity.“We examined Iraq’s Arab dimension, its unity and all its negative aspects,” Mussa told reporters. The Arab League chief, who has proposed to host a national reconciliation conference at a later date, had already met with the preeminent Sunni religious body, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, and several members of the government. The three-day visit was Mussa’s first since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and followed widespread criticism that the League has been slow to help rebuild the war-torn country.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said Thursday that he had no objection to the proposed national dialogue as long as it did not include “terrorists who have shed blood and high-ranking Baathists” from Saddam’s ousted regime.

Among the political leaders courted by Mussa, Saleh Motlaq, spokesman for the Sunni group the Council for a National Dialogue, said Saturday he and 80 Iraqi leaders from all political tendencies had been invited to Egypt for preliminary reconciliation talks.

“I was invited verbally by the secretary general to take part in a meeting that will be organised in Cairo on November 15,” Motlaq said. “In all, 80 Iraqi personalities from all political tendencies will be invited” ahead of a broader conference in Baghdad, the date of which was not revealed. Late Friday, meanwhile, Jaafari ruled out a transfer of Saddam’s trial to another country, rejecting calls from defence counsels who mooted the move after a lawyer was murdered. reuters

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