Diwaniya sahwa council meets in defiance of protests

DIWANIYA / IraqiNews.com: The Diwaniya sahwa (Awakening) Council on Monday held a meeting despite a demonstration staged by representatives of several clans in the province to demand its cancellation. “The council, formed today, comprises representatives of 16 sahwa councils. It is a national project announced by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after the success attained by other sahwa councils in Baghdad and other western Iraq province,” Minister of State for Clans’ Affairs, Muhammad Abbas al-Oraibi, told IraqiNews.com. “These councils will shoulder the responsibility of backing national reconciliation, help launch dialogue and settle disputes in central and southern Iraq,” said Oraibi, stressing that the councils are “independent and do not have any partisan affiliations”. Meanwhile, Abboud al-Issawi, Maliki’s advisor for tribal affairs, told IraqiNews.com that the reason why the local government was absent from the conference was that there are some clans that object the formation of the council, let alone others that refuse the formation of the council in the first place and consider it “politicized”. A tribal demonstration was staged in Diwaniya on Monday demanding the cancellation of the 1st constituent conference of the “politicized” sahwa council, scheduled to be held today at the 8th Division HQ, a spokesman for the province’s tribal sahwa council said. “The march started today from the Diwaniya provincial building in the central part of the city to the 8th Division HQ, urging the government to cancel the 1st constituent conference,” Talal al-Zamli told IraqiNews.com. “The persons inside the constituent conference do not represent the council,” said Zamli, accusing the council of being “politicized by the Islamic Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki”. Qahtan al-Azeez, a chieftain of the Khazaali al-Abtan clan, told IraqiNews.com that a political dispute has emerged between the Dawa Party and Shiite leader Abdelazeez al-Hakim’s Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) over elections. “Unfortunately, the Diwaniya clans were involved in this dispute and we hope that no sedition would be fomented among the clans,” Azeez said. He appealed to all tribal chiefs in Diwaniya to keep their distance away from this dispute and steer clear of any partisan affiliations. AmR (S) 2