NCRI – “I think Ahmadinejad is the most criminal and bloody person in the world,” said Emad Abbas, a 21-year-old university student in Samarra, a city in the north of Baghdad. “This visit degrades Iraq’s dignity,” New York Times reported from Baghdad.
Protests broke out in a number of places. In Kirkuk, Arab tribes and political parties rallied against the visit. “How can we tolerate this?” said Salman Abdullah Al-Hamad, an Arab tribal leader in Kirkuk. “Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq,” the report added.
NCRI – “I think Ahmadinejad is the most criminal and bloody person in the world,” said Emad Abbas, a 21-year-old university student in Samarra, a city in the north of Baghdad. “This visit degrades Iraq’s dignity,” New York Times reported from Baghdad.
Protests broke out in a number of places. In Kirkuk, Arab tribes and political parties rallied against the visit. “How can we tolerate this?” said Salman Abdullah Al-Hamad, an Arab tribal leader in Kirkuk. “Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq,” the report added.
“Ahmadinejad is the main reason why the occupiers remain in Iraq,” New York Times quoted Mohammed Dira Farhan, 50, a Falluja businessman. “His visit is intended to reassure his followers here,” he said, but the Iranian leader is “provoking and enraging” many Iraqis.
One man in Baghdad said: ”We hope that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the country won’t just be for certain interest groups. We hope that the visit will help stabilize the country and is not about hidden agendas," Euro News reported.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Fallujah demonstrated for an hour against Ahmadinejad’s visit. ëThe chieftains of Fallujah condemn the visit of Ahmadinejad to Baghdad,û one of their banners read, Associated press reported.
“The protest is a message to Iran from the Iraqi people, expressing our indignation towards Iran’s conduct. It is backing and training militias that killed hundreds of Iraqis,” Sabah al-Ilwany, a senior member of the Fallujah Assembly Party, told an Iraqi radio.
Anti-Tehran sentiment ran high in Fallujah in western Iraq where protestors burnt Iranian regime’s flag, DPA reported.
A rally bringing together Arab tribal and political leaders in the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk voiced strong opposition to the visit, DPA added.
‘We have seen today a visit by [a president] of a state with hands tarnished by the blood of innocent people in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine,’ Ahmed al-Ubaydi, the leader of the Iraqi Kirkuk Front, told the congregation, according to the report.
Tribes in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq joined those criticizing Ahmadinejad’s visit.
