Okay, I admit I was wrong. Iraq is not on the verge of a civil war.

[Le Jacquelope]

Iraq government warns of risk of "endless civil war"

By Michael Georgy and Lin Noueihed1 hour, 42 minutes ago

Iraq's defense minister warned on Saturday of the risk of a "civil war" that "will never end" as sectarian violence flared again despite a second day of curfew in Baghdad.

Extending a traffic ban in the capital to Monday after battles around Sunni mosques and a car bomb in a holy Shi'ite city, leaders scrambled to break a round of reprisals sparked by a suspected al Qaeda bombing of a Shi'ite shrine on Wednesday.

Sunni and Shi'ite clerics met to seek a joint approach at Baghdad's holiest Sunni mosque, site of one clash overnight.

The gravest crisis since the U.S. invasion in 2003 threatens Washington's hopes of withdrawing its 136,000 troops from Iraq.

"If there is a civil war in this country it will never end," Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a minority Sunni Muslim in the Shi'ite-led interim government, told a news conference.

"We are ready to fill the streets with armored vehicles."

Iraq's 232,000-strong, U.S.-trained security forces have few tanks but U.S. forces, which routinely patrol Baghdad with heavy armor, are also standing by, commanders said. The loyalties of the largely untried new police and Iraqi army could be tested in any clash with militias from which many were recruited.

The Pentagon said in a report on Friday no Iraqi units were able to fight on their own but about 40,000 troops were in battalions able to take the lead in combat with support from U.S. forces, an increase of 50 percent in the past three months.

Dulaimi called for calm and said reports had exaggerated the death toll, which he put at 119 since the bloodless bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra at dawn on Wednesday. Baghdad police say over 200 have been killed in and around the city.

TALKS

The biggest political bloc from the once-dominant Sunni Muslim minority said it might end a boycott of U.S.-backed negotiations on forming a full-blown national unity government.

But Iraq's most prominent Sunni cleric, blaming Shi'ite police for attacking his home, said live on pan-Arab television during the gunbattle: "This is civil war declared by one side."

Later, however, representatives of Harith al-Dari's Muslim Clerics Association met Shi'ite counterparts for talks.

Top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged tribal leaders from around the holy city of Najaf to "play their role in security," a Sistani aide in Najaf said after a car bomb killed eight and wounded 31 in the nearby holy city of Kerbala.

Police said they found bodies of 14 police commandos near one Sunni mosque attacked overnight. Police said it was not immediately clear how or when their colleagues were killed.

Gunmen wearing the black clothing preferred by some Shi'ite militias attacked the mosques with rocket-propelled grenades, police said. Residents said local Sunnis appeared to fire both on the militiamen and on police commandos who intervened.

Near Baquba, police said gunmen killed 12 members of one family in what they said was a sectarian attack on Shi'ites. Relatives said some victims were Sunnis due to a mixed marriage.

Rockets and mortars fell on Shi'ite Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. One destroyed a house and killed two women and a man, said a spokesman Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Three security men were killed in separate gun and bomb attacks on the funeral cortege in western Baghdad of an Iraqi journalist killed as she reported in Samarra on Wednesday.

OFFER

The main Sunni political bloc, which raised hopes for stability by standing in a parliamentary election in December, pulled out of negotiations on a unity coalition with Shi'ites and Kurds after accusing Shi'ite leaders of fomenting violence.

But on Saturday, after Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari issued a statement promising state aid to repair dozens of damaged mosques and a possible special guard force for religious sites, the Iraq Accordance Front said it could rejoin the process:

"It will not hesitate to reconsider its position and return to the negotiating table ... if our legitimate demands are met."

The Front has demanded, among other things, a formal apology for the reprisals from the ruling Shi'ite Alliance.

Rival Shi'ite leaders deny sending militias against Sunni targets; but shows of force strengthen them in negotiations.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the powerful, pro-Iranian SCIRI party which also runs the armed Badr movement, met U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, said aides to both men after a week in which U.S. relations with Shi'ite leaders have been strained.

Shi'ite fury exceeds any provoked by Sunni attacks that have killed thousands since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime; senior figures fear some Shi'ites may stop heeding calls from their religious leaders for restraint.

Iraqi and U.S. officials blamed the bloodless but symbolic attack on Samarra's Golden Mosque on al Qaeda, saying it wants to wreck the project for democracy in Iraq; al Qaeda accused Shi'ites of carrying it out as an excuse for attacks on Sunnis.

Abroad, there has been concern that Iraqi sectarian violence could inflame the entire Middle East if it gets out of hand.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald, Mussab Al- Khairalla and Nick Olivari in Baghdad, Sami al-Jumaili in Kerbala and Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba)

LOL, I bet a LOT of people came in here with crow on their plates... little did they know they were going to be the ones eating it...

 

[Toilette]

The ABC-tapes of Saddam's cabinet-meetings show they had WMD's, so the risks are worth it... A civil-war could easily backfire against-the-instigators, making their militia's easier-to-infiltrate, and eventually gang-busted Hoover-style... J Edgar, not the vacuum. Although...