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Iraqis Question Allegiances of Prime Minister Maliki

Leader Seen Serving Shiite Interests as Political Unity Is Challenged

By TERRY MCCARTHY



BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 1, 2006 — - Questions persist about whether the Iraqi government is up to the challenge of uniting the country and ending the violence.
The Iraqi parliament was created to represent the interests of all the nation's ethnic groups: Shiite, Sunni and Kurd. But it didn't look that way today when the parliament was unable to convene because so few members had arrived.
The entire point of the U.S. effort in Iraq depends crucially on the Iraqi political groups coming together. But at the moment the coming together is going nowhere.
Iraqis say the problem starts at the top, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is a Shiite.
When he came to power five months ago, he promised to bring Sunnis and Shiites together and said there would be national reconciliation, promising a "wide-open door."
But today he appears to serve only Shiite interests.
In September, Maliki supported a controversial law that Sunnis fear would shut them out of Iraq's oil wealth.
Two weeks ago, he ordered that police release a Shiite militia leader.
And Monday he told the United States to remove checkpoints around the stronghold of Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
"He is wholly beholden to these militia leaders for his power," said Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution.
With this record, it is not surprising that Sunnis see little future in negotiating with Maliki.
As people go to funerals and the violence and chaos spread from parliament to the poorest slums, Iraq's leaders seem to be part of the problem.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2622367

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Time to dust Saddam off, say we are sorry for his kids and put him to work?

Or to find a General in the new army to declare a state of emergency and give himself power? Sorta of Reza Shah (the man who overthrew the Qajars and gave Iran the international name "Iran").

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway