Iraq: UN envoy warns that violence threatens Government authority to enforce rule of law

Describing the escalating violence in Iraq as a “catastrophe and a national tragedy”, the senior United Nations envoy to the country called today on all Iraqis to end the vicious cycle, warning that it threatens to erode the Government’s authority to enforce security and the rule of law, without which no initiatives and reforms can be implemented.

In a statement released by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq Ashraf Qazi said that the violence inflicted upon the people of Mahmoudiah, Kufa, Baghdad, Najaf and some other Iraqi cities represented the “greatest danger.”

“It threatens to erode the government’s authority to enforce security and the rule of law without which no initiatives and no reforms can be implemented. The emerging phenomenon of Iraqis killing Iraqis on a daily basis is nothing less than a catastrophe and a national tragedy for the people of Iraq.”

Mr. Qazi called upon Iraqi citizens to cooperate with the legal authorities, stressed the equal importance of “necessary restraint” in the conduct of operations by the MNF-1 and Iraqi Security Forces to avoid civilian casualties, and urged political, religious and community leaders to make it their “immediate and overriding priority to search for ways to end the spiralling violence and to address the issues that underlie it.”