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Iraqi leader dismisses accusations of Iranian interference

NAJAF: The head of one of Iraq’s main Shia religious parties on Saturday refused to become involved in an argument over accusations that Tehran is interfering in Iraqi politics.

“We expected this kind of irresponsible and inaccurate statements and we don’t want a polemic,” Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said after meeting Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the holy city of Najaf on Friday night. “We trust the people to vote for those candidates who are supported by their religious leaders,” he said. His comments came after Iraq’s interim Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan on Wednesday accused Iran of being behind the Shia electoral list.

“It is an Iranian list,” he said, accusing one of the candidates, Hussein al-Shahrastani, of being an Iranian “agent”. “This expert worked for two years on the Iranian nuclear programmeme after having been freed in 1991. He now has the pretension of becoming the head of the Iraqi government but we will not allow that,” Shaalan said. Shahrastani, who holds a doctorate in nuclear chemistry from the University of Toronto, was a key official at the Iraqi atomic energy commission until 1979 when Saddam became president.

After Saddam took power, Shahrastani refused to be part of Iraq’s nuclear programmeme and was jailed for 10 years in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad until 1991.

He left for Iran with his wife and three children before moving to Britain to become a university lecturer.

Hakim’s party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), will contest the January 30 elections as part of an alliance of Shia factions backed by Sistani. He said that he would announced his party’s political programmeme over the next few days, adding that the main themes would be respect for the Iraqi people’s Islamic identity and protecting the political participation of all Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups.

Other items on the programmeme include good relations with neighbouring countries, of which Iran is one, the fight against terrorism and improving Iraqis’ living conditions. afp

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