| 22/7/06:IRAQ PARLIAMENT SPEAKER DEMAND FOREIGN TROOPS PULLOUT(AFP) [message #228310] |
Sa, 22 Juli 2006 16:01 |
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IRAQI PARLIAMENT SPEAKER DEMAND US TROOPS WITHDRAWS
Sat Jul 22, 5:43 AM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) -
Iraq's parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani bitterly criticized US
forces in Iraq, accusing them of "butchery" and demanded that they
pull out of the country.
Mashhadani was speaking at a UN-sponsored conference on transitional
justice and reconciliation in Baghdad, and his strongly worded attack
appeared to embarrass his international hosts, who grimaced on the
podium.
"Just get your hands off Iraq and the Iraqi people and Muslim
countries, and everything will be all right," the conservative Sunni
Islamist said, in a speech opening the conference.
"What has been done in Iraq is a kind of butchery of the Iraqi
people," he said in a long winded speech that criticized the tactics
of the coalition forces as well as US support for Israeli strikes
against Lebanon.
The two day conference, which was originally supposed to be opened by
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, will address the issue of dealing with
the crimes of previous Iraqi regimes and a plan to reconcile the
country's warring factions.
The prime minister is expected to name a reconciliation committee
Saturday.
Mashhadani bluntly told the audience of UN officials, foreign experts,
Iraqi politicians and civil society representatives that the Iraqi
people had little use for foreign advice on running the country or
foreign-sponsored conferences.
"If a reconciliation project is going to work it has to talk to all
the people," he said. "It must go through our Iraqi beliefs and
perceptions. What we need is reconciliation between Iraqis only, there
can be no third party."
To underscore his distaste for US forces in Iraq, he related an
anecdote about how US soldiers keep people waiting in lines at
checkpoints for hours because they insist on resting their
bomb-sniffing dogs.
"The sleep of American dogs is more important than people being
stopped in the street for hours," he said, evoking chuckles among
Iraqi delegates.
The UN representative who then opened the conference subsequently
referred to Mashhadani's speech as "spirited".
Mashhadani is a member of the main Sunni Arab parliamentary bloc, the
National Concord Front, which is a member of Maliki's national unity
government.
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