AMMAN, Aug 30: Senior Shia leader Mohammed Bahr al Ulloum on Saturday said he was “suspending his membership” of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council “to protest US troops’ inability to ensure security to Iraqis”.
The Al Jazeera television network reported that Bahr al Ulloum told a press conference in Najaf that he was suspending his membership of the council to protest the US administration’s failure to ensure security for the Iraqi people.
The religious leader vowed “not to resume his job as member of the Governing Council before the Americans shift the responsibility for security completely to Iraqis”.
Bahr al Ulloum is one of 13 Shia members of the 25-member council set up by the head of the US civil administration in Iraq, Paul Bremer, to reflect the country’s political and sectarian fabric.
Bahr al Ulloum also called “for the deployment of Arab troops in Iraq to take charge of protecting Islamic holy shrines”, the Al Jazeera said.
He claimed the assassination of Ayatollah Hakim was intended “to sow dissension” between the country’s Shias and Sunnis.
UN OPERATION: The United Nations may further scale down its already reduced operations in Iraq in the wake of the bomb explosion in Najaf, a spokeswoman said on Saturday.
“We are considering a serious reduction in the number of UN staff because we have missions to accomplish here and the difficulties we face do not permit us to do that properly,” said the spokeswoman, Veronique Taveau.
But she would not say how many staff might be pulled out and insisted that no decision had yet been made.
The world body evacuated many of its staff after an Aug 19 truck bombing outside its Baghdad headquarters that killed 24 people, including its special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and wounded more than 100.
The United Nations now has about 400 Iraqis and some 150 expatriates remaining, according to Veronique Taveau.
Any further reductions would come from its offices in Baghdad, in the cities of Mosul and Arbil in the north, Basra in the south and Hilla in central Iraq.
Friday’s attack in Najaf has intensified discussion of how to guarantee security of UN staff in the country.
EGYPTIAN WORKERS: Egypt is not allowing workers to travel to Iraq because of the deteriorating security situation there, a labour ministry official said Saturday.
The official said local employment companies had asked the ministry to allow several hundred workers to make the trip to the war-torn country to work for US contractors engaged in reconstruction efforts.
“We said ‘wait until security improves’,” he said.
He added that the ministry was also seeking details on the contractors and guarantees the workers would not be assigned to security tasks which might expose them to attacks by anti-US guerrillas, as well as insurance coverage.
“We want to make sure that adequate compensation will be paid to the workers if their contract is terminated, and that insurance will cover accident, death and rapatriation,” he said.
Local media said 6,000 workers had been recruited for jobs paying between 500 dollars and 2,300 dollars a month in Iraq, and 500 of those were for work as security guards. The labour ministry official could not confirm the figures.
Before the Iraq war erupted in March, an estimated 65,000 Egyptians worked in Iraq. The figure has not been updated, but it is believed that many fled the country to avoid the chaos that followed the US-led invasion and the fall of Baghdad. —dpa/AFP
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