DUBAI • The appeal from Makkah by Iraqi Sunni and Shiite religious leaders for an end to sectarian killing in the strife-torn country risks going unheard, analysts believe.
The 10-point "Makkah Document" was issued by 29 clerics from both sides of Iraq's religious divide when they gathered on Friday in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan under an initiative by the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The document draws on verses of the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, and stipulates that "spilling Muslim blood is forbidden".
It also calls for safeguarding the two communities' holy places, defending the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and the release of "all innocent detainees".
The declaration was welcomed as "a positive step" yesterday by Adnan al-Dulaimi, who heads the National Concord Front, the largest Sunni bloc in the Iraqi parliament.
"We call on the authorities, the parties, the tribes and religious leaders to stick to the declaration and to support it," Dulaimi told a Baghdad news conference.
"The government has a major role to play in implementing the document, especially with regard to freeing prisoners," he said.
But according to Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the religious leaders' appeal for the bloodshed to cease is likely to fall on deaf ears.
"Despite its doubly symbolic character, this appeal will suffer the same fate as the one issued after last November's Cairo conference, held under the aegis of the Arab League," Atwan said.
"The Cairo conference, staged under American pressure, was aimed at promoting national reconciliation. Instead it gave rise to civil war. The Mecca meeting, ordered by (US Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to Arabia, is mere crying out in the wilderness.
"The Arabs can do nothing for Iraq because they want to cure an incurable disease through the power of prayer, chanting and talismans, just like dervishes," Atwan added.
"What many thousands of soldiers have been unable to achieve on the ground because of the struggle by resistance groups, who were knowingly ignored and sidelined (from the meeting), cannot be brought about by declarations of good intentions."
Former Iraqi diplomat Dargam Abdullah al-Dabbagh, now a political science professor at Amsterdam's Free University, believes that "the absence of Ayatollah Al Sistani or even a representative of this emblematic Shiite figure, and of (radical Shiite cleric) Moqtada Al Sadr" from the Mekkah meeting was "very significant".
