Top Shiite Leader in Iraq Calls for Unity

02/24/2006

Feb 24, 6:37 AM (ET)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq’s most influential Shiite political leader called Friday for Sunni-Shiite unity and condemned the killing of Iraqis in a bid to help pull the nation from the brink of civil war after the wave of Shiite outrage triggered by the bombing of a Shiite shrine two days go.

In a statement, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said those who carried out the Wednesday bombing at the Askariya shrine in Samarra “no not represent the Sunnis in Iraq.”

Al-Hakim instead blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists and followers of al-Qaida in Iraq boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, saying “we all have to unite in order to eliminate them.”

“It is regrettable that things reached the degree that Sunni and Shiites are paying for the crimes committed by the enemy of Islam and Iraqis,” al-Hakim said. “This is what al-Zarqawi is working for, that is, to ignite a sectarian strife in the country.”

“We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged by the plots of the enemy of Iraq.”