News Update Service Friday, February 18, 2005
Allawi asks Shiites not to pursue Baathists
Baghdad, Feb 18 (AP): Iraq's interim prime minister cautioned the winning Shiite alliance Thursday against pursuing their agenda of weeding out members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, saying that it would "throw the country into problems."
In an interview with The Associated Press, Ayad Allawi urged the incoming government to focus on cementing national unity and promoting an atmosphere of reconciliation rather than hit at those Iraqis _ mainly Sunni Muslims _ who used to dominate Iraq until their abrupt removal from power following the U.S.-led war in 2003.
The Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, which took 48 percent of the vote in the Jan. 30 national elections, has made de-Baathification part of its platform.
Baathist militias are believed to have played a major role in the ruthless suppression of Shiite and Kurdish revolts after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War and in mass killings of the two communities.
The Kurds, who won 26 percent of the vote, have also said that they expected some sort of redress for the injustices they had suffered during Saddam's rule.
But Allawi appealed to the winners to exercise restraint.
"I hope if they get control and they're chosen to be the ones running the country ... that they revisit these issues,"' Allawi said. "We cannot afford in this country, for now, to go on a route different to that of national unity."
If they do, Allawi said, "it will throw the country into problems, severe problems."
Allawi, a former exile and surgeon whose previous Baath Party connections made him a valuable intelligence source for both the British and the Americans, was postwar Iraq's first prime minister.
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.