Zuhair Al-Naher - UK Spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister's Dawa Party and Christopher Hill - US Ambassador to Iraq, 2009 - 2010 HARDtalk

documents. You are up`to`date, now it is time

for HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk, just when you

think the instability in the Middle East can't get any worse, it does.

The Sunni extremist takeover of much of north and western Iraq threatens

to create a zone of chaos and violence that respects no national

borders. In Riyadh, Tehran and Washington, key strategic players

have a huge stake in what happens next. I am joined by Zuhair

al`Naher, a spokesman for the now `` Dawa Party, and Christopher Hill.

Can Iraq be brought back from the brink?

Zuhair al`Naher in London, and Christopher Hill in Denver,

Colorado, welcome to HARDtalk. Zuhair al`Naher, I want to start

with you. Would you accept that the very existence of your country as a

unitary state is now in great danger? The situation is grave, and

this is why Iraq has asked and is asking for everyone to contribute in

this difficulty. So, we are requesting regional countries to co`

operate, we are requesting the world community to co`operate with Iraq.

Iraq has been seized by a terrorist organisation that knows no

boundaries. They are battle hardened because of their activities, and the

freedom of activity that they have in Syria. There have been supported

financially by Gulf states in Syria, and often with the West turning a

blind I to this support. There is a problem with the " we" that you

refer to. We assume that means the Iraqi government. Christopher Hill,

is the problem not that the Iraqi government that is currently

constituted has been in entirely discredited? I would agree with what

you just said, but PM al`Maliki has lost the support of everyone else in

the country. Whether it is his fault or someone else's fault is something

one can discuss. Certainly he made some agreements with the Kurdish

people back in 2010. He tried to work things out with the Sunnis in

2010, and he is broadly perceived as someone who doesn't follow through

on his commitments. At this point, as they get ready to form a new

government, it is pretty clear that they need to form a new government

that someone other than al`Maliki at the helm. I do believe that the main

problem in Iraq continues to be that the Sunni community there has never

agreed to the idea of living under majority rule, and in the context of

Iraq, majority rule means Shia rule. I think it is a tall order right now

to try to hold Iraq together, and I think secretary Kerry is doing his

best, but this will be a very tough situation. I will get onto John

Kerry's role in a moment, but I want to throw it back to you Zuhair

Al`Naher, because what Christopher Hill was saying in part is that a PM

who cannot command with any credibility his armed forces, indeed

the armed forces that he is nominally responsible for runaway at

the first sign of a fight, that is the kind of man who, in a crisis

like Iraq today, clearly has no legitimacy or mandate as a leader. I

would like to go back to the very important point, a point that has a

lot of insight, which Ambassador Hill mentioned, which is that

al`Maliki has a problem in that he is dealing with partners,

particularly the Sunni community, who have never accepted that the

Iraqi political map has changed after the changeover of Saddam

Hussein. That the majority are Shia, and if you divide power

according to the representation of the Iraqi make up, then it means

that the shears have the majority. `` the Shia people. That is

something that the Sunni community has not yet accepted. Hang on a

minute, you represent the Dawa Party, and you very neatly put the

blame directly on the Sunni community for what is happening in

your country today. Surely much of the blame lies with a PM and his

coterie of friends at the top of government, who for years have

exercised power in a deeply sectarian way, and that is not my

opinion, that is the opinion of the American observers in the State

Department who have gone on the record in the recent past as

saying, " al`Maliki took apart all the political work that we had done

with Sunni communities in the awakening movement. He took it apart

brick by brick". The most important thing to say is al`Maliki, as all

the Shia parties, do not have a sectarian agenda. Why did he, for

example, lock`up, torture, sometimes some merrily execute so many Sunni

activists over the last decade? Why did he do that? There is no proof at

all, or any charge that he has executed or tortured... You have

read the human rights reports. In that between 30000 and 50,000

detainees have been arrested, many of them it seems specifically for

their Sunni activities. You know what happened in the protest camp

when al`Maliki's forces moved in. You know about the bombardment at

Fallujah. Why do you deny this? Iraq as a process of law. When there are

antistate activities, people who take up arms, people who try to

encourage suicide bombings that killed people everyday, people who

encourage armed insurrection, there is a process of law in Iraq. These

people are detained. We have lawcourts who try these people in a

fair trial. And their punishment is meted out to them. Are you trying to

tell me that you believe that the exercise of security power and

judicial power in Iraq under Nuri al`Maliki has been ethnically and

religiously neutral? We cannot say it is ethnically neutral, there is

always based for improvement, but we have a ministry of human rights who

keeps a very close eye with foreign observers, with respect to the

judicial process, and the process of fairness in Iraq. So, you know, this

is an important thing which I need to clarify. A lot of people who do

not want the political process to survive or to exist will bring up

these charges. Sometimes they are hugely exaggerated. The Sunni

minority has been excluded from power, or oppressed. If that is the

case, why did the Sunni representatives join the government?

Why did they accept to have a head of parliament as a Sony, and a

deputy PM as Sunni? You know that many senior politicians have claimed

that they have been frozen out of al`Maliki's administration. We see a

vice president who ended up accused of serious crimes and had to flee to

Turkey. There is ample evidence of the sectarian nature of the

al`Maliki regime. And I jump in on this? Ambassador Hill, go ahead.

What has do that by this into several segments `` one has to

divide this into several segments. The Iraqi police have received a lot

of training, but they are not to be confused with London police. It is

not unheard of that people are mistreated, and this kind of thing.

I think that is one issue where you have institutions within the

government that are not quite capable of managing things. You also

have a lot of serious political misjudgements from Mr al`Maliki, and

I think that is the root cause of his demise. When he formed his

government in December 2010, he named eight Sunnis to government.

These were serious ministerial positions. With respect to the

Interior Ministry, and with respect to the defence ministry, he said, we

will come up with names later, but in the meantime he said he would run

them himself. Unfortunately that was four years ago, and here still

trying to run the defence the interior ministries, and frankly he

ran into the ground. Secondly, he had fights with a couple of the

Sunni leaders. The man who was the vice president, and also the Deputy

PM and minister of finance, and al`Maliki, frankly, whatever he

thought he had on them, it made no sense to go after them in the

growing sectarian mood of the country. After all, it was a time

when ISIS was already trying to move in to Anbar province. It was a

political time when he should have been doing all he could to reach out

to the Sunnis, and maybe not pressing his agenda on people like

the Deputy PM. Frankly, we have a PM who is a politician I think gets

very low grades. If you are going to run Iraq you had better be a better

politician. I appreciate that point. I want to push you, when you talk

about the mistakes made by al`Maliki, on the mistakes arguably

made in Washington by the US as well. An interesting piece of work

by Dexter Phil Kearns, a journalist who wrote a long piece in the New

Yorker looking back. He said a few months before the 2010 elections,

let's remind ourselves, you are in charge of the US embassy in Baghdad,

he said American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to

Washington complaining that the US, with its combination of support and

indifference, was actually encouraging al`Maliki's

authoritarian tendencies. Is that true? First of all, I read his

article, and I can say categorically that there was no such telegram sent

from my embassy. I understand there was no such telegram sent from the

embassy of my successor. That little factoid I'm not sure is true. If

there wasn't such a message, maybe there should have been, and

Washington should have heeded it. Maybe you should have realised how

dangerous al`Maliki was going to be. There were a lot of concerns about

al`Maliki during my time, but the problem is, you can't beat someone

with no one. The problem is, the Shia did not come up with another

name that could really challenge al`Maliki. The problem was, the Iraq

national party, under a group of Sunni leaders, plus a person at the

top, a secular Shia, they came out ahead in the first round of

elections. They got 91 seats and al`Maliki got 89. You need 163 to

get a majority in Parliament. So al`Maliki went to work, and this is

a very hard`working, stubborn, difficult guy, he went to work, and

the Iraq national party people went to the Western press. So, al`Maliki

eventually prevailed, he made promises to the Kurdish people, he

reached out and picked off some of the Sunni cheeks, and he worked

quite well at that time. This is not 1950, this is 2010, and we were

supposed to stave some kind of coup d'etat, or push the front`running

candidate from replacing himself for a second term. The idea that we were

supposed to install someone else is really a reflection from people who

don't understand what American diplomats can and can't do.

We have to consider the here and now. The Sunni population of Iraq

will not accept Nouri al`Maliki as a man of reconciliation and the Kurds

have also had enough of him. The Shia majority seem to want him out

as well. If he is not the guy to form the new Iraqi government, who

is? Prime Minister al`Maliki has achieved, in recent elections, the

highest personal vote... We have already established that. He came

out with the best election results of any particular politician that

you, at the beginning of this programme, said that a vast amount

of your country is in the hands of terrorists and you admitted that it

is in an existential crisis and this is his legacy. Iraq needs a new

leader. There is a process that is going on in Iraq after the elections

and after the verification of the results. What will happen now is

that Parliament will convene on the 1st of July and the parliamentarians

and political blocs who have been newly elected, the largest block

which is the Shia bloc, will then be given the responsibility of forming

a government. That includes the largest block within that which is

the coalition of Prime Minister al`Maliki. I cannot predict what

will happen. Is your party ready to put forward a different name?

Clearly coming the next leader will be Shia. You have said that 60% of

the population is Shia and you are the majority but a new name, is your

party prepared to say to Nouri al`Maliki that it is time for

someone else to try to heal the wounds of the country? Thus far no

new name has been put forward, however, we do not know what will

happen in the meetings and it is quite a complicated set of

meetings. It is about electing a new government. The fear is that it

could take months of horse trading before we get there and you may not

moms even the situation on the ground. I want to get back to you,

Christopher Hill, are you concerned about the questions coming out of

the mouths of President Obama and John Kerry right now Pies they say

that there will be no decisions taken on Syria as far as military

interventions go until Iraq has a new inclusive government and then

John Kerry has gone to Baghdad and said that they will offer assistance

to ensure that there is an effective response to the challenge of ISIS.

What exactly is the United States up to right now? What the Obama

administration is doing is spreading a difficult needle. `` threading.

The American people do not want to see us militarily involved, even

sending 300 advisors was difficult for some people to swallow. On the

one hand, I don't think the president wants to be militarily

involved and on the other, he understands that he has to do

something. He also understands that this is not purely a military

problem but that it involves politics as well which is why he

sent the Secretary of State. I think John Kerry is trying to say to these

Sunni community, and I think that is one of the most difficult

conversations, to say that if there is a new Prime Minister who is a

Shia but is not named Nouri al`Maliki, will you support him? And

that has been the crux of the matter since the get`go. They have trouble

with the idea that Iraq should be the only Arab country in the Middle

East to have a Shia led ever meant and that is the crux of the

problems. To some extent, these Sunni community has been reluctant

to deal with ISIS the cause, frankly, they are intimidated by

them but they also understands that there is no way they can support a

government under Nouri al`Maliki and still have any credibility with the

Sunni faction. If the politics lineup and give the Sunni people can

understands that a Shia led government that reaches out to Sunni

people is a better outcome than getting their heads chopped off by

ISIS, and maybe this has a chance and the US would be prepared to do a

little more militarily. We don't have much time and they want to get

to the wider regional implications of everything that has happened. One

of them is the role of Iran. You could argue that given the total

failure of the Iraqi armed forces, the most significant player is the

general of the Iranian Revolutionary guards who seems to be behind so

much of the militia. Is the United States prepared to accept this role

for Iran in shaping the future of Iraq? I think this is a really

difficult one for the United States. After all, the Shia militia

who were funded and said to live by the Iranians are responsible for the

deaths of many Americans and I think the US would have difficulty doing

any kind of military co`ordination with someone like the head of their

force. It is a tough one. On the other hand, I think there needs to

be some kind of political dialogue with the Iranians and I think it is

a political mistake meant to say that Nouri al`Maliki is doing their

bidding for them. I can testify to this from back in 2010, he was the

fourth choice for the Iranians, they were never big fans of his. No one

is. They came around to him because there was no one else. We do need to

have political discussions with the Iranians but we are not prepared to

work with the militarily. Let's talk about the Kurds as well because the

jigsaw is so complex. We have the president of their regions saying

that Iraq is falling apart and the time is here for the people of

Kurdistan to determine their own future and this is the harbinger of

the breakup of your country, is it not? The Kurds have always had

aspirations. They have a federal government. Is your party prepared

to offer almost complete autonomy to the Kurds to keep them in some kind

of unitary state? I don't think they want complete autonomy. Iraq can

exist as a unit and a country with the Kurds as part of it. With them

controlling oil resources? There is a constitutional provision for that.

I think you have got two except that the Constitution does not apply

right now and the realistic question is whether you will let them

continue to control it? I don't think the Iraqi people are willing

to forfeit it. Could I jump in on this? I want to end on a big thought

from you. A recent UN human rights Council said that because of what is

happening in Iraq and Syria, this chaotic region of the Middle East, I

have said that the region is drawing very close to an all`out regional

war. Do you believe that? I do believe that and I believe that the

real problem is Syria and the complete lack of a political

process. Even if basher al`Assad `` by Schar all Asad was hit by a bus,

they will still need some kind of system and no one has even begun

that discussion. It is a marked contrast to Bosnia which used to be

held up as the poster child of the worst response to a crisis from the

West. Here we do not even have a contact plan or a contact group.

Maybe the Obama administration does not have any sort of strategic

vision? I will leave that to the BBC to say. I would rather you say it

because he works closely with him as an advisor. I think there needs to

be a much more comprehensive look at this. One of the concerns we all

have about the Obama administration is that there doesn't seem to be a

good team there. There doesn't seem to be a team of rivals even, just

many people with different views on the issues and I think he does need

to pull it together and look at it from a broader context as your

question implies. Christopher Hill and Zuhair Al`Naher, I thank you

very much for the `` being with me. After the warm summer sunshine that

we had in the first part of the week, things will turn a bit cooler

over the next few days. It is cooler today but there will still be some

hazy sunshine around. For much of Wednesday, England, Wales and the

east of Scotland will stay fine and dry with the western half of

Scotland and Northern Ireland cloudier without breaks of