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President Talabani defends armed Shiite
group amid claims it has killed Sunni clerics
8.6.2005
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BAGHDAD, Iraq
(AP) Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Tuesday
backed a Shiite Muslim militia that's been accused
by Sunni leaders of killing their followers,
including clerics.
A bloody wave of violence since the April 28
announcement of Iraq's new Shiite and Kurdish
dominated government has killed more than 870
people. During the spree, more than 10 Sunni and
Shiite clerics have been killed in apparent
tit-for-tat slayings that raised fears the country
was on the verge of descending into a civil war.
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President Talabani |
Sunni leaders have been calling for the disarming of
the Badr Brigade, the military wing of the country's
largest Shiite political party, the Supreme Council
of the Islamic Republic in Iraq. The party claims
the Badr Brigade is no longer a militia but performs
social and political functions.
''May those who describe the heroes of Badr and
their Kurdish brothers as militia be doomed to
failure,'' Talabani, himself a Sunni Kurd, said
during a conference marking the second anniversary
of the Badr Brigade's transformation from a solely
military body to a political one.
''You and your (Kurdish) brothers are the heroes of
liberating Iraq,'' Talabani added. ''You, my
brothers, march on without paying attention to the
enemies' claims because you and the (Kurdish
militia) are faithful sons of this country.'' |
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Talabani's remarks come amid renewed calls for the
disbanding of Iraq's militias, which were mostly
formed as part of the struggle by exiled anti-Saddam
opposition leaders prior to the April 2003 U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq that toppled the former dictator's
regime.
U.S.-led occupation authorities had demanded that
all militias, including the Badr Brigade, be
disbanded and absorbed into Iraq's nascent security
forces. But these demands have been largely ignored
since the return of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities
in late June.
Shiites and Kurds dominate Iraq's new police and
army forces, a fact that has enflamed Sunni Arab
resentment toward the new U.S.-backed Iraqi
government and thought to be fueling the
Sunni-dominated insurgency.
The Kurdish Peshmerga militia, the size of which is
estimated at 100,000, has been largely exempted from
efforts to disband militias because of its close
ties to the United States and supporting role during
the 2003 Iraq war.
The Supreme Council of the Islamic Republic in Iraq
was formed in exile in Iran two years into the
1980-88 Iraq-Iran war by the late Grand Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. His younger brother and
SCIRI's current leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, led the
Badr Brigade in cross-border clashes against Saddam
Hussein's army and fought alongside Iranian forces
during the war that killed and wounded more than 1
million people from both sides.
AP
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