Thursday, March 31, 2011

MANAMA: Bahrain’s Shiite opposition head Ali Salman warned Iran and Saudi Arabia Wednesday 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, also called on Iran to stop its “offensive” against the island kingdom, telling pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that political dialogue could only start once security had been restored.

“We urge Iran not to meddle in Bahraini internal affairs,” opposition head Ali Salman said, also demanding the pullout 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 and Iran.
Iranian Defense 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.”

Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmad al-Khalifa, in the interview with Al-Hayat newspaper, said Manama had “proof” of “plotting with [Lebanon’s] Hezbollah” and of training in Lebanon on how to organize mass protests.
But authorities in Bahrain have no intention of taking steps against Lebanese expatriates living in the kingdom, he added.
He said Bahrain did not want Iranian mediation and called on “Iranians to stop this offensive that we have been exposed to.”

Talks offered by the crown prince in early March, initially bogged down by debates on conditions, were dropped after the crackdown.
“The priority now is to return to security and order. There’s no doubt that a political process will start and develop, but only after we’ve restored stability,” Sheikh Khaled 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.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Salman who heads the opposition Shiite bloc Al-Wefaq, accused the government of using “the security option to shut the door to dialogue.”

Last month, Bahrain’s Crown Prince Sheikh Salman, with the encouragement of Washington, offered to start an open dialogue with all parties on the issues which sparked the protests.
But the opposition says it refuses to be coerced into talks.

Salman said opposition supporters were not being called on to stage fresh protests or to confront security forces. A day of mourning is to be held Saturday for the “martyrs” of the protests, he said.
Bahrain’s 40-member Parliament accepted Tuesday the resignation of 11 out of 18 MPs from Salman’s Al-Wefaq, exposing them to possible legal action, after a news blackout on the arrests of top activists.
Al-Wefaq MPs resigned en masse in February in protest at the use of deadly force against protesters. – AFP, Reuters