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Opponents disrupt meeting of Iraqi Shiite opposition
Critics of a newly-launched Iraqi Shiite Muslim opposition group disrupted a meeting hosted by its founder Abdel Majid Al-Khoei in the holy city of Qom, central Iran, the state news agency IRNA reported Thursday. The opponents of Khoei and his moderate Shiite Assembly of Iraq disrupted the meeting which was "attended by a number of Iraqi refugees living in Qom", the agency said. They chanted slogans such as "go back to the United States". Abdel Majid al-Khoei is a son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoei, a top Iraqi Shiite cleric who died under house arrest in 1992 in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad.He is also secretary general of the London-based charitable Al-Khoei Foundation, which also branches in New York and Montreal. "Iraqi Shiites, who make up the majority in Iraq, have never enjoyed a legal status and place in the country, and now is the time to change that," Khoei said before his speech was disrupted. The United States "wants to change the Iraqi regime for its own interests, and the interests of the Iraqi nation fall in line with this policy," he added. Sounds like he agrees with us, today anyway. IRNA did not give details on the political affiliation of his critics at the meeting. But we can guess. Most Iraqi Shiite opposition groups have offices in Iran, notably the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an armed fundamentalist group. They're the "Real" holy men. Posted by: Steve 2003-01-10 |
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