Iraqi PM criticises protesters for blocking highway
Maliki said countries must rely on civil means of expression.
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Friday said the actions of protesters who have cut a main highway with demonstrations against him are "not acceptable," while also calling for dialogue.
Countries "must rely on civil means of expression," Maliki said in a speech in Baghdad, adding that "cutting roads and stirring sectarian strife" is "not acceptable".
Maliki was referring to protesters who have demonstrated against the Shiite premier since Sunday in Ramadi, the capital of Sunni-majority Anbar province to the west of Baghdad, blocking the main highway leading to Jordan and Syria. He said that it is instead better that "we talk and we agree at the table of brotherhood and love in ending our problems and differences, and that we listen to each other".
The demonstrations began after at least nine of Sunni Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi s guards were arrested by security forces on December 20 on terrorism charges, leading the minister, a member of the secular, Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, to call for Maliki to resign or be removed.
Iraqiya and other members of Maliki s unstable national unity government have accused him in the past year of concentrating power in his hands and moving towards dictatorship. The arrest of Essawi s guards came almost exactly a year after Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi s guards were arrested and accused of terrorism.
An arrest warrant was also issued for Hashemi, like Essawi, an Iraqiya member, who fled to Iraq s autonomous Kurdistan region and eventually to Turkey, saying the charges against him were politically motivated.
Hashemi has since been given multiple death sentences in absentia on charges including murder, while death sentences have been handed to his guards as well.
