Loading ...(Reuters) – Tribal leaders and clerics from Iraq’s Sunni heartland said on Friday they would be willing under certain conditions to join a new government that hopes to contain sectarian bloodshed and an offensive by Islamic State militants that threatens Baghdad.
Members of the Sunni Muslim minority made their offer after Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, threw his weight behind prime minister-designate Haider al-Abadi, a Shi’ite trying to form an inclusive government in a country beset by daily bombings, abductions and executions.
Abadi faces the daunting task of pacifying the vast western province of Anbar, where Sunni frustrations with the sectarian policies of outgoing Shi’ite premier Nuri al-Maliki have pushed some to join an insurgency led by the Islamic State fighters.
The tribal leaders and clerics said Sunni representatives in Anbar and other provinces have drawn up a list of demands to be delivered to Abadi through Sunni politicians, their spokesman Taha Mohammed al-Hamdoon told Reuters.
cont. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/15/us-iraq-security-idUSKBN0GF0Z620140815