CAIRO: In a new bid to help stabilize Iraq, the Arab League has stepped up pressure on the country s feuding factions to hold a reconciliation conference and discuss a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal, officials said Tuesday. The League hopes to hold the conference, which was initially planned for February, on June 20 in Baghdad said spokesman Alaa Rushdi. Iraqi president Jalal Talabani had suggested an earlier date in June, but most leaders among Iraq s Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions rejected his offer saying they were not ready. Rushdi said the League s Secretary General, Amr Moussa, was in intensive contacts with Iraqi leaders to convince them on a final date for the conference. The meeting is necessary to end this catastrophe, said Hesham Youssef, the secretary general s chief of staff. We cannot stand idle and merely watch what goes on (in Iraq), Youssef said. A League committee held several meetings this week in Cairo to try to hammer out a blueprint for the conference. The agenda should include a program to end the mission of the foreign troops in Iraq, said Ali Al-Jaroush, in charge of the Iraqi issues at the Arab League. All Iraqi factions that have given up violence would be represented in the conference, Al-Jaroush said. Shiites have firmly opposed opening the peace conference to Sunni Arab officials from Saddam Hussein s former regime or from pro-insurgency groups. Arab League officials said this point was still under discussion and would largely depend on current negotiations between the Iraqi president and insurgents. A similar reconciliation conference in Egypt last November failed to produce any tangible solutions to Iraq s enduring chaos. The meeting had been marred by differences between participants, and Shiite and Kurdish delegates even stormed out of a closed session when one of the speakers said they had sold out to the Americans. In November s meeting, Shiite and Kurdish leaders sought to appease Sunni Arabs by agreeing to a final statement that said the country s opposition had a legitimate right of resistance and recognized the goal of a U.S. troop withdrawal, but did not lay down a specific timeline. Washington has said the United States would stay only as long as it takes to stabilize Iraq. Arab League officials said the peace conference in June would pave the way for political dialogue among all Iraqi factions willing to renounce violence against fellow Iraqis, averting the risk of a sectarian civil-war. AP
