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Iraqi PM warns of proxy war in Syria

29 March 2012 18:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki warned Thursday that arming the conflicting parties in Syria would lead to proxy wars, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"We believe that arming the either conflicting parties in Syria will lead to regional and international proxy wars in Syria," Maliki said in his speech in the opening session of Arab League ( AL) summit that started here in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Thursday.

Maliki said that the international community has to practice pressures on the Syria government and the opposition so they would go for a national dialogue, adding "We strongly support the efforts of the Arab and UN envoy Kofi Annan to solve the crisis peacefully."

For his part, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting "it is essential that President Assad put those commitments into immediate effect. The world is waiting for commitments to be translated into action."

"The key here is implementation. There is no time to waste," Ban said in his speech in the summit.

Iraq is hosting the AL summit as the top Arab leaders and international top officials are delivering their speeches in the opening session.

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Wednesday that the Baghdad summit would issue a resolution over Syria’s crisis, but said "nothing new" except backing the international efforts to end the crisis.

"There is no new initiative (by the summit) over Syria’s issue, but there is a draft resolution that would mesh together between the Arab and the international attitudes," Zebari said in a news conference, referring to that the Arab’s initiative would back the international efforts.

Zebari said that such merge probably would bolster the pressures on the Syrian government and the opposition as well to implement peace plans that would end the bloodshed in the country.

Zebari said that the Syrian government approved the international plan to solve the crisis, but there is difference among the Syrian opposition parties which they have to unify their stances toward such peace plan.

Since the early stages of the Syrian crisis, Iraq refused to support punitive measures by the AL against the neighboring Syria for President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged crackdown on protesters.

However, Iraqi officials earlier said that their government’s attitude towards Syria is to keep hammering out peaceful solutions to the Syrian crisis that might preserve the aspirations of Syrian people to carry out democratic change away from external interference and sectarianism.

Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has close ties with Syrian President Assad, who is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.