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No future for Iraq if sectarianism rules,
Rice says
18.11.2006
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HANOI, November
18, -- Iraqis "don't have a future" if they give in
to the sectarian tensions tearing at their society,
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on
Saturday.
"They (only) have one future and that is a future
together. They don't have a future if they try to
stay apart," Rice said in a speech on the sidelines
of an Asia Pacific summit.
Iraq has been riven by sectarian violence for months
and its prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has been
unable to disband militias and death squads who
appear to operate with impunity.
While acknowledging the bloodshed, Rice said she
believed the Iraqis were headed toward a better
future and disputed that the United States was stuck
in a "quagmire." |
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
"I don't mean to diminish the difficulties that we
have in Iraq and that the Iraqi people have in
Iraq," Rice said. "This is difficult going."
As she has for months, Rice urged the Iraqi
government to take tough decisions and the society
as a whole to "face up to their differences."
"If they do that and if we support them and if we
remain committed to them and if they realise that
the stakes in Iraq are (really) the stakes for a
different kind of Middle East that can form the
center of a more peaceful world -- they have a
chance and (we also) have a chance," she added.
Rice spoke on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi that has drawn
repeated comparisons between the war in Iraq and the
Vietnam War, an idea that she and other U.S.
officials seek to rebut at every opportunity.
Dismay over the Iraq war is widely regarded the key
reason that the Democrats swept Bush's Republican
party from control of the U.S. Congress earlier this
month and has accelerated a search for a solution
inside and outside the government.
Rice sought to cast the Iraq war as comparable to
the challenges the United States faced in history,
including its independence from Britain, the Civil
War, and the struggle against communism after World
War Two.
"We are talking about people that are struggling, we
believe, toward a better future," she said of the
Iraqis.
Reuters
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