Talk:Mokhtar Lamani

Arab diplomat resigns after Iraq mission

By OMAR SINAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 4, 2:06 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - The Arab League sent Mokhtar Lamani to Iraq to persuade its bitterly divided Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to make peace. He failed, and has now resigned, disillusioned and nearly drained of hope.

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He says his mission was doomed by feeble support from the Arab governments that hired him, U.S. policies and the refusal of Iraq's leaders to work together.

"I am no longer going to stand and watch Iraqis' bodies being taken to the cemetery," he told The Associated Press in Cairo, where he returned from Baghdad last week to deliver his resignation to the Arab League.

His mission was the Arab world's belated effort to help solve the turmoil — a response to criticism from Iraq and the United States that Arabs were not doing enough. For much of the time since Saddam Hussein's fall nearly four years ago, Arab governments had shunned involvement, not wanting to imply approval of the U.S.-led invasion.

But the 54-year-old Moroccan diplomat left in failure.

"The help that (Iraq) should get was out of my hands," he said. "I have no desire to lie to myself or to Iraqis" — adding that he had "nothing to give."

From the start of his eight months in Baghdad, Lamani struck a different approach. He chose not to live in the city's heavily guarded Green Zone, where the U.S. and British embassies are and where many diplomats stay. He said he wanted to have "contact with all levels of Iraqis."

Distancing himself from the Green Zone also would boost his credibility with Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which views the district as a symbol of American domination of Iraq.

The choice meant he was in constant danger, though. With no security team for the villa where he lived and worked, Lamani depended on Kurdish guards assigned to protect the Foreign Ministry next door. He traveled in an unarmored car — "many were calling me suicidal for that," he said — until the Arab League provided an armored one seven months into his mission.

He would hear mortar shells exploding at the nearby Alawi bus station — a frequent target of militants — and, when Haifa Street became a battlefield last month, he went up to his roof to watch U.S. and Iraqi troops fighting insurgents.

Throughout, Lamani was working on the main goal of his mission, which was little noticed in the West: to convene a national reconciliation conference between Iraq's fractious parties and sectarian groups, a favored project of the Arab League's secretary-general, Amr Moussa.

The conference was first scheduled for last June, the month Lamani arrived in Baghdad. Then it was reset for August. Finally, it was postponed indefinitely because Iraqi factions could not agree on who should be invited, with Shiite Muslims opposing any Sunni groups with links to the insurgency.

Lamani, who worked previously for the United Nations in Afghanistan and Africa, met repeatedly with all of Iraq's factions.

He conferred with senior Shiite leaders, such as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, and went to the holy city of Najaf for talks with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric. He went to the northern city of Irbil to talk with Kurdish leaders.

He wanted to go to Anbar province, the Sunni Arab heartland and a main stronghold of the insurgency. But he was told it was too dangerous, so Sunni political and religious leaders came to Baghdad for meetings.

Lamani also met with members of Saddam's ousted Baath Party and even representatives of some Sunni insurgents, hoping to persuade them to compromise.

But the attempts to put together a conference "were all nonsense," because Iraq lacks the key requisite for reconciliation — trust, Lamani told AP.

He said that during his meetings with Iraqi officials, it was painful to "hear what each Iraqi faction wants to take from Iraq. I never heard them talk about what they have to give Iraq."

In his Jan. 22 resignation letter, a copy of which he gave to AP, Lamani said of the Iraqi leaders: "My only problem was their own relations with each other, their strong feeling that each is a victim of the other."

Lamani said he ultimately blames Washington for Iraq's deterioration. "Its ways of dealing with the Iraqi problems, including the Iranian intervention, are not right. ... They need to change their policy in an urgent way," he said.

He has backed the Iraq Study Group's report in December that recommended Washington engage Iran as part of a regional approach to ending Iraq's violence. The White House rejected that approach, accusing Iran of supporting Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Lamani also faults the 22 nations of the Arab League, saying they did not give Iraq "the necessary priority or seriousness." Arab governments were so detached from Iraq that it was "as if it were on the moon," he said.

Now, after a year of deepening sectarian violence in Iraq, mainly Sunni Muslim nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are increasingly worried over the killing of Sunni Arabs by Shiite militias and over the influence of their regional rival, mainly Shiite Iran.

Lamani said he hopes his resignation will be a wake-up call for Arab governments.

If Iraq falls into outright civil war, "it will burn down everything, and not only in Iraq," he said. "God alone knows how far it will go." By OMAR SINAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 4, 2:06 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - The Arab League sent Mokhtar Lamani to Iraq to persuade its bitterly divided Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to make peace. He failed, and has now resigned, disillusioned and nearly drained of hope.

ADVERTISEMENT

He says his mission was doomed by feeble support from the Arab governments that hired him, U.S. policies and the refusal of Iraq's leaders to work together.

"I am no longer going to stand and watch Iraqis' bodies being taken to the cemetery," he told The Associated Press in Cairo, where he returned from Baghdad last week to deliver his resignation to the Arab League.

His mission was the Arab world's belated effort to help solve the turmoil — a response to criticism from Iraq and the United States that Arabs were not doing enough. For much of the time since Saddam Hussein's fall nearly four years ago, Arab governments had shunned involvement, not wanting to imply approval of the U.S.-led invasion.

But the 54-year-old Moroccan diplomat left in failure.

"The help that (Iraq) should get was out of my hands," he said. "I have no desire to lie to myself or to Iraqis" — adding that he had "nothing to give."

From the start of his eight months in Baghdad, Lamani struck a different approach. He chose not to live in the city's heavily guarded Green Zone, where the U.S. and British embassies are and where many diplomats stay. He said he wanted to have "contact with all levels of Iraqis."

Distancing himself from the Green Zone also would boost his credibility with Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which views the district as a symbol of American domination of Iraq.

The choice meant he was in constant danger, though. With no security team for the villa where he lived and worked, Lamani depended on Kurdish guards assigned to protect the Foreign Ministry next door. He traveled in an unarmored car — "many were calling me suicidal for that," he said — until the Arab League provided an armored one seven months into his mission.

He would hear mortar shells exploding at the nearby Alawi bus station — a frequent target of militants — and, when Haifa Street became a battlefield last month, he went up to his roof to watch U.S. and Iraqi troops fighting insurgents.

Throughout, Lamani was working on the main goal of his mission, which was little noticed in the West: to convene a national reconciliation conference between Iraq's fractious parties and sectarian groups, a favored project of the Arab League's secretary-general, Amr Moussa.

The conference was first scheduled for last June, the month Lamani arrived in Baghdad. Then it was reset for August. Finally, it was postponed indefinitely because Iraqi factions could not agree on who should be invited, with Shiite Muslims opposing any Sunni groups with links to the insurgency.

Lamani, who worked previously for the United Nations in Afghanistan and Africa, met repeatedly with all of Iraq's factions.

He conferred with senior Shiite leaders, such as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, and went to the holy city of Najaf for talks with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric. He went to the northern city of Irbil to talk with Kurdish leaders.

He wanted to go to Anbar province, the Sunni Arab heartland and a main stronghold of the insurgency. But he was told it was too dangerous, so Sunni political and religious leaders came to Baghdad for meetings.

Lamani also met with members of Saddam's ousted Baath Party and even representatives of some Sunni insurgents, hoping to persuade them to compromise.

But the attempts to put together a conference "were all nonsense," because Iraq lacks the key requisite for reconciliation — trust, Lamani told AP.

He said that during his meetings with Iraqi officials, it was painful to "hear what each Iraqi faction wants to take from Iraq. I never heard them talk about what they have to give Iraq."

In his Jan. 22 resignation letter, a copy of which he gave to AP, Lamani said of the Iraqi leaders: "My only problem was their own relations with each other, their strong feeling that each is a victim of the other."

Lamani said he ultimately blames Washington for Iraq's deterioration. "Its ways of dealing with the Iraqi problems, including the Iranian intervention, are not right. ... They need to change their policy in an urgent way," he said.

He has backed the Iraq Study Group's report in December that recommended Washington engage Iran as part of a regional approach to ending Iraq's violence. The White House rejected that approach, accusing Iran of supporting Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Lamani also faults the 22 nations of the Arab League, saying they did not give Iraq "the necessary priority or seriousness." Arab governments were so detached from Iraq that it was "as if it were on the moon," he said.

Now, after a year of deepening sectarian violence in Iraq, mainly Sunni Muslim nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are increasingly worried over the killing of Sunni Arabs by Shiite militias and over the influence of their regional rival, mainly Shiite Iran.

Lamani said he hopes his resignation will be a wake-up call for Arab governments.

If Iraq falls into outright civil war, "it will burn down everything, and not only in Iraq," he said. "God alone knows how far it will go."