Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was to deliver a blunt message to fellow Shiite Islamist leaders in Iran yesterday that they should not interfere in Iraqi affairs.
It is a message that may please al-Maliki's sponsors in the US, who accuse Iran of funding and training militants fighting US forces in Iraq, possibly in response to mounting US pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear program.
Maliki met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on arrival yesterday in Tehran and was expected today to meet Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the highest authority in Iran, and influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Stopping short of explicitly endorsing US accusations of Iranian "meddling" in Iraq, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Monday: "We want to pass a message to the Iranian leaders that Iraq needs good relations with neighboring countries, without interference in our internal affairs."
While officially on record as encouraging Iraq's new, warm ties to Washington's adversary, there is unease in the US at Iranian influence over the Shiite leaders brought to power in elections that followed the US overthrow of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Since forming a national unity government four months ago, Maliki has vowed to curb militant Shiite factions, some of whom also have links with movements in Iran, as part of efforts to avert civil war with Saddam's once-dominant Sunni minority.
Saddam's genocide trial entered its fifth hearing yesterday, a day after the former Iraqi ruler charged that Kurdish testimonies against him were dividing the country.
Saddam and six co-defendants including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali," were in the dock again to face charges including genocide over the brutal 1987-1988 Anfal campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq which prosecutors say left 182,000 people dead.
The trial, which began on Aug. 21, has seen nine Kurds give chilling accounts of how Saddam's forces swept through the northern Kurdish villages killing and gassing people and destroying their homes.
On Monday the former ruler charged that the trial was dividing Iraq between the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs.
"The whole beginning [of witness testimonies] is aimed at creating a split within Iraq between the Kurds and Arabs," Saddam said in a tirade from the dock.
"I want to give a message to the Iraqi people that they should not suffer from this guilt that they killed Kurds. This is shameful," he said.
Saddam, who is also awaiting a verdict in a trial over the killing of Shiite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982, is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Anfal campaign.
If found guilty, he faces execution by hanging.
Saddam, showing flashes of anger, claimed he had on several occasions acted on behalf of the Kurdish minority in Iraq.
"After the Iran-Iraq war ... I made a statement on TV and radio giving orders that no Iraqi security force should arrest Kurds, and if anyone has problems with Kurds, they should complain to Saddam Hussein," he said.
The former dictator also said it was he who agreed autonomy for the Kurds in northern Iraq in 1970, when he was vice president.
"If the Arabs were racist and discriminatory, why would they accept an autonomy for the Kurds," he said, vowing however that "Iraqis will not split."
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