Shi’ite cleric wants Sunnis in Iraq government, Allawi says

May 24, 2010|Associated Press

BAGHDAD — The leader of the Sunni-backed coalition that won the most seats in Iraq’s March election said the country’s most influential Shi’ite cleric assured him in a meeting yesterday that no group would be excluded from the new government.

There are concerns that Sunnis will be largely excluded after the two Shi’ite blocs that came in second and third in the parliamentary vote formed an alliance that probably will lead to another Shi’ite-dominated government, much like the current one. The Iraqiya coalition, led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, is not part of the alliance.

Allawi met Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf, where the cleric lives. He said Sistani said the next government should serve without “excluding and marginalizing any group,’’ an apparent reference to minority Sunnis who have felt politically sidelined since 2003.

The 83-year-old Sistani is revered by Iraq’s majority sect and carries great weight with the country’s Shi’ite politicians, who have dominated the Iraqi government since the US invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime.

“Al-Sistani stressed national unity and . . . the importance of forming the government as soon as possible,’’ said Allawi, a secular Shi’ite.

Sistani also told Iraqiya leaders that he has “no veto’’ on which politicians serve, said a senior Sunni politician with Iraqiya, Tariq al-Hashemi.