NYT : Shiite Bloc Sharply Criticizes U.S. Outreach to Sunnis

Shiite Bloc Sharply Criticizes U.S. Outreach to Sunnis

By SABRINA TAVERNISE | October 3, 2007

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 — Iraq’s largest Shiite political bloc threw its weight against the American effort to cooperate with Sunni tribes today, stating in clear, sharp language that Sunnis from militant backgrounds should not be allowed into official police forces.

The United Iraqi Alliance, the largest political bloc in Parliament, whose members control the government, said that the American military’s recruiting of Sunnis in sensitive areas in and around the capital amounted to empowering men with histories of militancy.

“We refuse and denounce giving protection to those terrorists who committed hideous crimes against the Iraqi people and allowing them to be responsible for security,” the statement read. The groups were, the statement said, “the reason for the bad security situation.”

“We demand the American administration to hasten in stopping this adventure.”

The statement was the first broad public criticism by the country’s most powerful group of Shiites of the American effort to change the course of the war by setting local Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The effort has been largely successful in Anbar, a vast desert province in western Iraq that is almost exclusively Sunni, and senior Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, have proudly showcased the cooperation.

But the military is beginning to recruit Sunnis inside the capital, the center of Iraq’s political and economic power and nearly a quarter of its population. The development is upsetting Shiites, who fear that empowering Sunnis with militant pasts will deepen the war and shift the power balance that has favored Shiites over the past year.

Recruitment drives are being carried out in more than a dozen Sunni neighborhoods across the city. Late last month, 744 Sunnis became policemen in Baghdad’s westernmost neighborhood, Abu Ghraib. On Monday, the military announced that more than 300 applicants had been approved for training in Amiriya, a neighborhood further east.