Saudi says U.S. policy handing Iraq over to Iran
Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:10 AM IST

By Robert Gibbons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. policy in Iraq is widening sectarian
divisions to the point of effectively handing the country to Iran,
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday.

"(Iraq's) people have been separated from each other," Faisal told the
Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "You talk now about Sunnis
as if they were separate entity from the Shi'ite."

He urged the United States, which is battling a Sunni Arab insurgency
against occupying U.S. forces and backs the Kurdish- and Shi'ite-led
Iraqi government, to work "to bring these people together."

Saudi Arabia has voiced fears that an Iraqi constitution, due to be
put to a referendum in four weeks, could split the country apart and
disenfranchise a Sunni minority that lost power when a U.S.-led
invasion ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

"If you allow civil war, Iraq is finished forever," Faisal said.

Such a conflict, he said, would bring in Iran because of its interest
in the Shi'ite-dominated southern part of Iraq, the Turks because of
their concern about an autonomous Kurdish surfacing in the north, and
Arab nations in the region.

"We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was
driven out of Kuwait," said Faisal, referring to the first Gulf War in
1991, when Saudi Arabia fought with U.S. and other allied forces to
liberate Kuwait after Iraq invaded.

"Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason," he
said.

[...]

Full article at Reuters India ...
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews
&storyID=2005-09-21T030042Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-216835-1.xml

Cheers, Steve..

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