Fresh talks aim to avoid religious war

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http://www.worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1495302,00.html


Michael Howard in Baghdad
Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian

Iraq's religious leaders are intensifying efforts to heal the rifts between the country's Sunnis and Shias amid a spate of sectarian killings that has raised fears of civil war.

A weekend meeting between senior figures from the Sunni Association of Muslim Clerics and the Shia Badr Brigades - the militia of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the biggest Shia party - sought to ease tensions caused by the killing of at least 14 Sunni clerics in the past month.

Several Shia religious leaders and politicians have also been killed during the same period.

It was the first of a series of face-to-face talks between the two powerful groups engineered by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who is mediating in the crisis.

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