"If you allow civil war, Iraq is finished forever," said Faisal.

DUBAI, September 21, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal on Wednesday, September 21, launched a scathing criticism of the US policies in Iraq, warning that they were widening sectarian divisions and could spark a deadly civil war.  

"If you allow civil war, Iraq is finished forever," Reuters quoted Faisal as addressing the US Council of Foreign Relations in New York.

"(Iraq's) people have been separated from each other. The US has always been speaking of Arab Sunni insurgency which they were opt to fight while they favor the Kurdish-and Shiite-dominated government," the minister added analytically.

Sunnis fear that a draft constitution adopted by the Shiite-Kurdish controlled parliament would lead to the break-up of the country into a Kurdish north and a Shiite south.

The text has also drawn fire from senior Arab officials like Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, who said parts of the draft are a "recipe for chaos."

Faisal urged the United States, which is backing Kurdish-and Shiite-led Iraqi government, to work "to bring these people together."

On Sunday, September 18, Saudi Arabia 's highest religious authority hit out at the US and Al-Qaeda operative in Iraq Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi for seeking "to sow civil war" in Iraq.

"Adding to the bloodshed and murder of innocents by planes and bombs are attempts by suspect parties to trigger sectarian tensions between the people of Iraq," grand mufti Sheikh Abdelaziz Al-Sheikh in statements published by Al-Hayat newspaper.  

Washington and Riyadh locked horns in 2003 before the US-led invasion of Iraq when the latter refused to be a launch-pad for the war unless the Americans secured a United Nations mandate.

The US Air Force subsequently relocated its Gulf headquarters from the Prince Sultan Air Base to Qatar, ending a 13-year presence in the kingdom.

"Iraq over to Iran "

"The occupiers should evacuate and let Iraqis govern themselves, so peace, stability and democracy returns to Iraq," said Asefi.

Faisal further said an Iraqi civil war would bring in Iran because of its interest in the Shiite-dominated south and the Turks because of their concern about an autonomous Kurdish surfacing in the north.

"We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait," said Faisal, referring to the first Gulf War in 1991, when Saudi Arabia fought with US and other allied forces to liberate Kuwait after Iraq invaded.

"Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason," he said.

Iranians, Faisal charged, go into areas that American forces have pacified and "pay money ... install their own people (and) even establish police forces and arm the militias that are there."

"And they are protected in doing all this by the British and American forces," he added.

On Tuesday, September 20, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Tehran of meddling in Iraqi affairs.

"They (Iranians) are interested, they are involved and they are active. And it's not helpful," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.

But Iran dismissed Rumsfeld's accusations as "baseless and fictitious."

"The occupiers should evacuate and let Iraqis govern themselves so peace, stability and democracy returns to Iraq," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told state news agency IRNA.

"From the beginning of the Iraq crisis, Iran has played a constructive role in providing security in Iraq and, in doing so, has had constant contact with the Iraqi government and different groups," he added.