IRAQ: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says political crisis behind violence but crowd stones his convoy in Sadr city

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made an urgent plea on Sunday (November 26) to the rival sectarian factions in his national unity government to end disputes that he said were behind the bloodshed and crisis of recent days. With the President, a Vice-President and a Deputy Prime Minister at his side, Maliki said he had berated all Iraq's political leaders -- rather than militant groups as he has in the past. "The ones who can stop a further deterioration and the bloodshed are the politician," he said. But he added this could happen "only when they agree and all realise that there are no winners and losers in this battle." "Let's be totally honest -- the security situation is a reflection of political disagreement," he said, surrounded by Sunni and Kurdish leaders as well as his fellow Shi'ites. But when he visited Baghdad's Sadr City slum on Sunday to pay his respects to some of the 202 victims of last week's devastating bombing angry fellow Shi'ites threw rocks at his motorcade. "It's all your fault!" one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a hostile crowd began to surge around the premier and then jeered as his armoured convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony. The area is a base for the Mehdi Army militia led by Maliki's fellow Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. It was a dramatic demonstration of the popular passions Maliki and his national unity government are trying to calm following Thursday's multiple car bombs in Sadr City -- the worst since the U.S. invasion -- and later revenge attacks.

ITN Source | November 26, 2006

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