Thursday 31 March 2011

Bahrain opposition head wants Iran, Saudi out

Bahrain''s Shiite opposition head Ali Salman today warned Iran and Saudi Arabia against using his country as a "battlefield" in a proxy war.Salman urged Iran to keep out of the Sunni-ruled state''s affairs and called on Saudi troops to leave the country. Bahrain''s foreign minister, meanwhile, renewed accusations that Lebanon''s Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Tehran, was "training" regime opponents in the Shiite-majority country. "We urge Iran not to meddle in Bahraini internal affairs," opposition head Ali Salman said, also demanding the withdrawal of Saudi-led troops in a joint Gulf force deployed in Bahrain since mid-March to help quash the protests. "We demand Saudi Arabia withdraw the Peninsula Shield forces," he told a press conference. "We do not want Bahrain to turn into a battlefield" for Saudi Arabia, which is predominantly Sunni, and Shiite Iran, its arch-foe. Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said last week that bringing in Gulf troops was a "strategic and political" blunder that would cost the Bahraini regime its "legitimacy". Twenty-four people, four of them police, were killed in a month of unrest, Bahrain''s Interior Minister Rashed bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa said yesterday, linking the troubles to Hezbollah.Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa, in an interview with Al-Hayat newspaper, said Manama had "proof" of "plotting with Hezbollah" and of training in Lebanon on how to organise mass protests. But authorities in Bahrain have no intention of taking steps against Lebanese expatriates living in the kingdom, he said.The foreign minister said his country, which has been widely condemned over the use of deadly force to crush unrest, had feared its Shiite-led protests could spark sectarian conflict in other Gulf states. "There have been sectarian tensions everywhere" for centuries, he told Al-Hayat. "Bahrain was afraid sectarian confrontations would break out not only in Bahrain but in all other regions." Sheikh Khaled argued that unrest in Bahrain was fired not so much by political opposition but rather a sectarian division. "We want to affirm to the world that we don''t have a problem between the government and the opposition ... There is a clear sectarian problem in Bahrain. There is division within society," he said.

AFP




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