Spokesman also says government wants Sunni ministers back New York Times
(11-18) 04:00 PST Baghdad --
The Iraqi government on Saturday credited Iran with helping to rein in Shiite militias and stemming the flow of weapons into Iraq, improving the security situation noticeably.
The Iraqi government's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, speaking at a lunch for reporters, also said that the Shiite-dominated government is making renewed efforts to bring back Sunni Arab ministers who have been boycotting the government for more than four months.
Speaking about Iran, he said that government helped to persuade the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to ask his Mahdi militia to halt attacks. Al-Sadr ordered his militia to stop using weapons in early September, and officials say the stand-down by Mahdi members has helped improve stability. They say it also seems to have helped decrease the frequency of attacks with explosively formed penetrators, a powerful type of bomb that can pierce heavy armor.
Al-Dabbagh is the first Iraqi official to say publicly that Iran has used its influence with al-Sadr to discourage him from using his militia for armed attacks.
"The freezing of the Mahdi Army makes us feel they have good intentions," al-Dabbagh said. "Iran played a role in this."
Al-Dabbagh said the turning point came when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Iran in August and met with the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the Shiite shrine city of Mashad. Al-Maliki told the Iranian leader that "Iran had to choose whether to support the government or any other party and Iraq will decide according to which they choose," al-Dabbagh said.
The Iranians promised to help and have done so, he said . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/11/18/MNG0TENCS.DTL&type=politics
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