UN urges Iraqi government to stop slide into civil war
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Baghdad, Nov 25, IRNA
UN-Iraq-Qazi
UN envoy to Iraq Ashraf Qazi on Saturday urged Iraqi government to stop a slide into civil war and stop the cancer of sectarianism from destroying the country.
Qazi said in a statement that the car bombs that killed more than 200 people in a Shia area of Baghdad on Thursday and 'blind acts of revenge' were part of a vicious cycle of sectarian violence tearing apart the very political and social fabric of Iraq.
"No country could tolerate such a cancer in its body politic." The city of 7 million was under a tight curfew imposed after 202 were killed in Sadr City, stronghold of the Mehdi Army loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In apparent revenge for the Sadr City bombings, four mosques and homes were attacked in a Sunni enclave in northwest Baghdad on Friday, Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Salem al-Zobaie said.
Police found the bodies of 21 men and boys from an extended Shia family on Saturday in a mainly Sunni Arab village in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
President Jalal Talabani, convened senior government leaders on Friday.
"For the first time we exchanged views openly," he said. Another meeting was set for Saturday.
Sunni Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi said all sides should work together, but top Sunni religious leader, Harith al-Dari, wanted on an arrest warrant for inciting violence currently on Cairo visit, rejected the call.
Aides of Sadr have threatened to pull out of the government if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki goes ahead with a planned meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan next week.
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