 AMMAN - Pro-US ally JordanÂ’s King Abdullah on Monday urged US Vice President Dick Cheney to support a greater political role for IraqÂ’s Sunnis to restore stability and curb IranÂ’s growing influence, officials said. They said Cheney was told by the monarch during a meeting in the Red Sea port of Aqaba that Washington should pursue more vigorously the benchmarks on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al MalikiÂ’s government on national reconciliation, that include dismantling Shia militias and giving Sunnis a greater say.
| Even though the Sunni Iraqis haven't earned much of a right to have a say, and they're only 15% of the population, their brethern Sunnis in Saoodi-controlled Arabia and Jordan want them to get plum jobs and a veto on everything in Iraq. Cheney has to be a hell of a diplomat not to laugh in their faces. |
“His Majesty stressed that the only way to end the infighting is reconciliation between all components of the Iraqi people and participation of all groups in the political process,” the monarch was quoted by a palace official as telling Cheney.
| Part of which is the Sunnis accepting their place in the new republic. |
“The increase in violence lately is disrupting efforts to restore stability and increases tensions in the region,” the monarch was quoted as telling Cheney.
Officials said Cheney was told by Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt that Washington had to put more pressure on the Maliki government, which is seen as dominated by Iranian backed Shia religious parties, to increase Sunni representation in Iraq’s security forces. They told the top US official it was difficult to back Washington’s goals of containing Iran’s nuclear threat as long as “a flawed Iraq” strategy fails to redress the political imbalance tilted in favour of Iran’s fellow Shias in Iraq. “The dogged obsession on reining in the insurgency has only helped to give Shia parties aligned to Iran greater power which they abused to further marginalise Sunnis from government,” one official who requested anonymity told Reuters.
| Which tips the Saoodi hand here: they want us to do more to stop Iran, but at the expense of putting all Shi'a down. Whereas the Iraqi Shi'a, managed properly, could be among our better long-term allies in the region. |
Cheney also heard Arab concern that absence of a political deal with Sunnis would doom to failure the US military surge in Iraq, seen as a last ditch effort to avert all out civil war.
| Sunnis must be having their asses handed to them, you usually see Arabs bleat like this only when they're getting whacked hard. |
Arab moderates warned Cheney failure in Iraq would not only damage broader US interests in the region but destabilise its allies and stoke radicalism, another Jordanian official said. “We are very worried about the disastrous consequences of the failure of the US in Iraq and its impact on the rise of Iran’s power. It will be a double blow to America’s allies and its vital strategic interests in the region,” said the official.
| How's about you 'Arab moderates' tell your Sunni cousins to drive al-Qaeda out of Iraq and otherwise respect the new law in town? Then and only then will we see if we can 'persuade' our pal Maliki to pull in his horns a little. |
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