Arab diplomat resigns after Iraq mission

The Arab League sent Mokhtar Lamani Iraq to persuade its bitterly divided Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to make peace. He failed, and has now resigned, disillusioned and nearly drained of hope.

He says his mission was doomed by feeble support from the Arab governments that hired him, U.S. policies and the refusal of Iraq's leaders to work together. "I am no longer going to stand and watch Iraqis' bodies being taken to the cemetery," he told The Associated Press in Cairo. In his Jan. 22 resignation letter, a copy of which he gave to AP, Lamani said of the Iraqi leaders: "My only problem was their own relations with each other, their strong feeling that each is a victim of the other." Lamani said he ultimately blames Washington for Iraq's deterioration. "Its ways of dealing with the Iraqi problems, including the Iranian intervention, are not right. ... They need to change their policy in an urgent way," he said. It is impossible to break down the sectarian divide in Iraq. All attempts to reconcile the warring Sunnis and Shiites will fail . Because their leaders are working on hidden agenda. Lamani stressed that the US Administration committed a grave mistake in Iraq by dismantling the state institutions, Debathification, and dissolving the army. He pointed out that the Baker-Hamilton report ultimately would not serve anybody's interests other than those of the United States. He said that the situation in Iraq was complicated, and was bound to become even more complicated if the neighboring countries were to continue to nurture sectarianism at the expense of the interests of the Iraqi people. Lamani pointed out that the operations of eviction and killing according to the identity were no longer restricted hostilities between one sect and another, but they had extended to the internal fighting within the same sect.