From the SNH
Stop your meddling, Iraqi minister tells US
By Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent in Baghdad
March 11, 2006

AMID rising American frustration with the political deadlock in Iraq, the National Security Minister, Abdul Karim al-Enzy, has rebuked Washington for interfering in Iraq's domestic affairs.

In a remarkable broadside against the US, Mr Enzy charged that it was deliberately slowing Iraq's redevelopment because of a self-serving agenda that included oil and the "war on terror".

The attack came as the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told a Senate inquiry in Washington that Iraq's political leaders needed "to recognise the seriousness of the situation and form a government of national unity that will govern from the centre, and to do it in a reasonably prompt manner".

To that end, US diplomats have demanded a more generous sharing of key portfolios among Iraq's religious and ethnic populations than the dominant Shiite religious parties are willing to concede.

In particular, they are urging the dismissal of the hardline Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr.

But in an interview with the Herald, Mr Enzy snapped: "The last time I checked, Bayan Jabr was Interior Minister of Iraq - not of the US or the UN. He is one of our best and this is interference in our business."

Mr Enzy argued that if the US-led coalition in Iraq had been more serious about rebuilding the country's security forces in the first year of the occupation, it could now be making substantial cuts in foreign troop numbers in Iraq. "We don't want foreign forces here, but it's impossible for them to leave now, because we're on the edge of civil war," he said.

"The truth is the Americans don't want us to reach the levels of courage and competence needed to deal with the insurgency because they want to stay here.

read more at the SMH