Word: ites
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reason for Washington's eagerness to talk is simple: As much as it would prefer not to admit it, the U.S. will struggle to achieve its goals in Iraq without Iranian cooperation, because Tehran retains far more influence than Washington does over the Shi'ite religious parties that have emerged dominant from Iraq's democratic elections. Right now, the political process in Iraq remains stalled by the failure among its elected leaders to agree on a unity government, as the Shi'ites push back against Washington's urging to do more to accommodate Sunni concerns...
...Iran's National Security Council head, Ali Larijani, said Thursday that Iran had agreed to talk in response to a plea by its most powerful ally in Baghdad, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the largest party in the Shi'ite bloc. Hakim, caught in the maelstrom of his country's rising sectarian tension, certainly has an interest in achieving a measure of accord between his longtime backers in Tehran and the U.S.; he knows better than most that the survival of the political system which has handed him so much power still depends on the U.S. military presence...
...could take a minute, I'd like to discuss what a national-unity government would mean. What are the forces that should constitute this government? On that, there is broad agreement -not unanimous, but broad agreement - that it should be formed from the Shi'ite alliance, the Kurdish alliance, the Sunni Arab alliance and across sectarian groups, [the secular block] led by Iyad Allawi. The second issue is that there has to be a process for decision-making in which these forces could participate and that's important for a variety of reasons. There is a strong polarization along ethnic...
...effort to unseat Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Before Samarra, it seemed the parties had come to the general acceptance that he was going to remain Prime Minister in the new government. Now there seems to be a strong effort to dislodge him, and that really angers the Shi'ite bloc...
...When Shi'ite mobs came into a Sunni Arab neighborhood, they came into a mixed neighborhood, Shi'ite families pointed out, "That is a house of a Sunni." This is new and different. It points to a cleavage in society itself. That trend seems to be going in the exact opposite direction to the political direction you want the parties to take. How do you make those two line up? How do you make people come back to their neighborhoods...