Reuters, 1 July 2014 – The leader of a major exiled Iranian opposition group called on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to step aside on Friday (June 27), as retired top-ranking U.S. military personnel said no peace was possible in the country while he was still in place. Maliki has been serving as caretaker prime minister since April’s elections but with a Sunni insurgency threatening to dismember the country, his future has been called into question. In a giant exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris festooned with flags, tens of thousands of supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran gathered for an annual rally where Maliki was roundly criticised.
The France-based group is led by Maryam Rajavi who laid the blame for instability in Iraq — which has seen militants seize control across Sunni regions in the north and west of the country — squarely at the door of the Iranian government which she accused of meddling. “As there is an international consensus — as well as regional and internal in Iraq — Maliki should be removed from power as the Iraqi people demand,” she told journalists before the rally. Rajavi added that a national unity government representing different factions of Iraqi society must be formed, echoing calls by Western diplomats and ministers. Earlier on Friday, the most influential Shi’ite cleric in Iraq moved to speed up the process of forming a government by calling on the country’s leaders to choose a prime minister before parliament sits next week. Colonel Wesley Martin served in the military police in Iraq from 2003-4 as the anti-terrorism officer for all of the coalition forces in the country and he was invited to attend the rally. He too said that Maliki needed to leave if any stability was to be recovered there. “There is no future in this country with Nuri al-Maliki in charge,” he said. “If Maliki stays in, the country is going to sink deeper and deeper into chaos. It’s already a civil war, it’s going to be a reign of terror,” he added. Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and equipped by the United States, largely evaporated in the north after the militants launched their assault with the capture of the north’s biggest city Mosul on June 10. Marine and former commander of U.S. and British forces in Iraq General James Conway said on Friday that the Iraqi army was perfectly capable of seeing off the opposition from insurgents in the north, but that they lacked the right support and direction from the government. “If a government doesn’t fight for its army, the army won’t fight for the government, and I think that’s what you’re seeing,” he said, citing a lack of morale. The NCRI’s annual rallies with their rock concert atmosphere attract thousands of supporters from across Europe with coach loads arriving from Poland and Germany after overnight trips. Some came from as far away as Australia and the United States. The main component of the group is the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MEK), a former guerrilla movement, which was taken off the official U.S. list of terrorist organisations in 2012. The European Union made a similar decision in 2009 after a prolonged court battle.