The New York Times
Sunni Arab sheiks from volatile Anbar Province have denounced a powerful Sunni cleric, calling him "a thug" for supporting the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and urging the Iraqi government to issue an arrest warrant against him.
The sheiks, the founders of a group called the Anbar Salvation Council, which they formed in September to resist foreign militants in Iraq, were reacting to statements that the cleric, Harith al-Dhari, had made in interviews last week in which he criticized Sunni tribal leaders who had recently decided to take a stand against Al Qaeda.
Anbar, a vast western desert province with Ramadi as its capital, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, with various militant groups working to topple the Shiite-led government and end the U.S. presence in Iraq.
But as the fundamentalist members of Al Qaeda have tried imposing Taliban-like rule on areas of Anbar, some Iraqi tribes have turned against the group, leading to a further fracturing of what at least initially seemed to be a united resistance to the U.S. invasion.
Dhari leads the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of conservative clerics that is outspoken in its criticism of the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi government. In the interviews last week, he accused the Anbar council of trying to cozy up to the Iraqi government in return for money.
"We, on behalf of the Anbar tribes council, say to Harith al-Dhari: If there is a thug, it is you; if there is a killer and a kidnapper, it is you," said Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, leader of the Rishawi tribe.
Rishawi spoke at a news conference at the Mansour Hotel in Baghdad. He strode into the room swathed in the traditional white robes of a sheik and surrounded by three gunmen. Three Shiite sheiks from the south also accompanied him in a show of sectarian unity.
Dhari's statements have touched off outrage in the highest ranks of the Iraqi government. President Jalal Talabani said last Tuesday that Dhari was stirring up sectarian strife and that he was trying to enlist the aid of Sunni-led countries in the region to foment violence here. Dhari is in Amman, Jordan, and has been traveling widely across the Middle East.
On Thursday, the Interior Minister Jawad Bolani announced on TV that he had issued an arrest warrant against Dhari. The next day, after some Sunni leaders expressed anger at this move, a spokesman for the office of the Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that no warrant had been issued and that officials had just been investigating Dhari. Clerics allied with Dhari called for Sunni political parties to withdraw from the government.
Rishawi said Saturday that "Dhari doesn't represent the people of Anbar, and we ask the Muslim Scholars Association to get rid of him."
Separately, the Syrian foreign minister, Walid Moallem, will visit Iraq Sunday, a Kurdish legislator and Iraqi Foreign Ministry official said.
Moallem will be the first ranking Syrian official to visit since the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman said. Syria and Iraq have had no diplomatic relations since 1982.