AFP
Jeddah
Saudi Arabia warned yesterday of the risks of a civil war in Iraq with unpredictable consequences for the region, after Sunni militants seized large areas from Shia-led government forces.
The unrest “carries warning signs of a civil war with unpredictable consequences for the region”, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at the opening of a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) in Jeddah.
Saud renewed Saudi accusations that “sectarian policies of exclusion” of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority implemented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government were responsible for the violence.
This paved the way for countries with “bad intentions” towards Iraq “to go ahead with plots threatening its security, stability, national unity and sense of Arab identity”, he said.
His remarks came as Iranian President Hassan Rohani said his country would do whatever it takes to protect Shia holy sites in Iraq against the Sunni militants.
Iraq was represented at the meeting of the 57-nation OIC by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
He discussed “regional developments” with the Saudi deputy crown prince, Moqren bin Abdulaziz, on the sidelines of the meeting, the official SPA news agency reported.
Prince Saud said the three-year-old civil war in neighbouring Syria had helped create the climate for internal unrest in Iraq.
He said that conflict, which has killed more than 160,000 people, had “taken a turn to the worse” following the breakdown of UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva in February.
Saudi Arabia has blamed the Tehran-backed Damascus government for the collapse of the talks.
Their failure led to an “escalation in the violence and genocide carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people” and “diminished chances for a political solution”, Prince Saud said.
He called for Syrians to be provided with the means “to defend themselves” and warned that the conflict was “prone to further deterioration” as long as the international community failed to take “a decisive step”.