BAGHDAD - Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the new US defence secretary Thursday that the sectarian violence afflicting his country was the fault of Sunni terrorists, not Shiite militia groups.
At his first meeting with Secretary Robert Gates, Maliki hit back at the voices in Washington that have accused him of not doing enough to rein in armed Shiite movements accused of targeting Sunni civilians.
"All terrorist operations in Iraq have political motivations," Maliki told Gates, according to a statement from his office. "Saddamists and Takfiris are banking on instability in a desperate attempt to turn back history."
Saddamists are supporters of ousted leader Saddam Hussein while Takfiri is a term used in Iraq to designate some Sunni extremist groups - such as Al-Qaeda's Iraq subsidiary - which endorse the murder of Shiite civilians.
Gates was in Iraq to listen to US commanders and Iraqi leaders and plan a way to resolve the bloody crisis. Last week he received counsel from the Pentagon quite different from that given him Thursday by Maliki.
According to the US Department of Defence's quarterly report into the Iraq campaign, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia is a more dangerous source of sectarian violence than Maliki's Sunni foes.
"The group that is currently having the greatest negative affect on the security situation in Iraq is Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM)," the report said, using the Arabic term for Mahdi Army.
Sadr's group "has replaced Al-Qaeda in Iraq as the most dangerous accelerant of potentially self-sustaining sectarian violence in Iraq.
"JAM exerts significant influence in Baghdad and the southern provinces of Iraq and on the government of Iraq," the report added.
Maliki and his supporters argue that Sadr's movement, which includes Iraq's biggest single parliamentary bloc, must be accommodated within the political process, while his opponents allege he is appeasing Shiite death squads.
Nevertheless, Maliki's office said that he and Gates had "put the final touch on the Baghdad security plan which will be implemented soon according to a new vision".
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