BAGHDAD, May 30
(Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said
on Tuesday no pro-government party militias would be
exempt from his plan to disband irregular armed
forces, a vow that could put him at odds with close
coalition allies.
"Every militia which is loyal to a party is a
militia," he told Reuters in an interview.
"We must have one decision: when we say 'militia' we
mean all those who are armed other than the army and
police."
Pressed to confirm that even the biggest militias
run by governing parties would have to go, he
specifically named the Kurdish peshmerga, the
Mehdi Army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr
and the Shi'ite Badr movement as being among those
that would have to be disbanded.
Referring to Law 91, a measure passed by the U.S.
occupation authority, he said that spelled out 11
political militias that would have the right to have
their members join the official security forces
rather than simply be thrown out of work: |
Iraqi Prime minister Jawad al-Maliki
Photo:AP |
|
"There
are 11 political parties under Law 91 who are
regarded as having militias and the right to merge
them into the police or army, including Badr, the
Mehdi Army and peshmerga."
Law 91, which Maliki said in his government
programme he would implement in full, says all such
militias must disband.
Kurdish leaders, including Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani, have said that their peshmerga would not
be affected by the national unity government's
decision to ban all militias.
They say their force, which defended their territory
from Saddam's troops through the 1990s, is now an
official body of the Kurdistan regional government
and that the new Iraqi constitution gives such
federal entities the right to have their own forces
-- not unlike U.S. states' National Guard troops.
The Sadr organisation and the Badr movement's
political allies, SCIRI, are among the main three
components of the dominant Shi'ite Alliance bloc,
along with Maliki's Dawa party.
"Our plans on the militias must go ahead because the
presence of militias ... will mean the security
situation remaining unstable. The militia
disarmament plan is linked to reconciliation and
development in security," Maliki said.
He held out the prospect, however, of favourable
treatment for armed groups which fought Saddam's
"tyranny" -- that would seem to include the
peshmerga and Badr forces -- from those which arose
in the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq.
The once dominant Sunni Arab minority accuses
Shi'ite and Kurdish militias, some working through
their roles in the police, of persecuting their
community and running death squads.
Maliki said on being sworn in 10 days ago that he
would restore a monopoly of force to the Iraqi state
to prevent the country sliding into anarchy.
(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald)
Reuters
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