ERBIL, Iraq — More than 300 Iraqis, including tribal
leaders, called for a normalization of ties with Israel at a conference in
autonomous organized by a US think-tank, drawing a chorus of
condemnation Saturday from Baghdad.
اضافة اعلان
The first initiative of its kind in Iraq, a historic foe of
Israel and where its sworn enemy Iran has a strong influence, the conference
was held Friday.
The organizers, the New York-based Center for Peace Communications
(CPC), advocates for normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries,
alongside working to establish ties between civil society organizations.
Iraqi
Kurdistan maintains cordial contacts with Israel, but
the federal government in Baghdad, which has fought in Arab-Israeli wars, does
not have diplomatic ties with Israel.
Four Arab nations — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan —
last year agreed to normalize ties with Israel in a US-sponsored process dubbed
the Abraham Accords.
"We demand our integration into the Abraham
Accords," said Sahar Al-Tai, one of the attendees, reading a closing
statement in a conference room at a hotel in the Kurdish regional capital
Erbil.
"Just as these agreements provide for diplomatic
relations between the signatories and Israel, we also want normal relations
with Israel," she said.
"No force, local or foreign, has the right to prevent
this call," added Tai, head of research at the Iraqi federal government's
culture ministry.
However, Iraq's federal government rejected the conference's
call for normalization in a statement on Saturday and dismissed the gathering
as an "illegal meeting".
'Traitors'
The conference "was not representative of the
population's (opinion) and that of residents in Iraqi cities, in whose name
these individuals purported to speak," the statement said.
The office of Iraq's President Barham Saleh, himself a Kurd,
joined in the condemnation.
Powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr urged the government to
"arrest all the participants", while Ahmed Assadi, an MP with the
ex-paramilitary group Hashed Al-Shaabi, branded them "traitors in the eyes
of the law".
The 300 participants at the conference came from across
Iraq, according to CPC founder Joseph Braude, a US citizen of Iraqi Jewish
origin.
They included Sunni and Shiite representatives from
"six governorates: Baghdad, Mosul, Salaheddin, Al-Anbar, Diyala, and
Babylon," extending to tribal chiefs and "intellectuals and
writers", he told AFP by phone.
Other speakers at the conference included Chemi Peres, the
head of an Israeli foundation established by his father, the late president
Shimon Peres.
"Normalization with Israel is now a necessity,"
said Sheikh Rissan Al-Halboussi, an attendee from Anbar province, citing the
examples of Morocco and the UAE.
Kurdish Iraqi leaders have repeatedly visited Israel over
the decades and local politicians have openly demanded Iraq normalize ties with
Israel, which itself backed a 2017 independence referendum in the autonomous
region.
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