Jabouri: Prominent figures attend Baghdad Sunni conference


Iraq's Sunni Conference is due to be attended by prominent political figures living outside Iraq, Iraqi parliament speaker Salim al-Jabouri said on Tuesday.

Jabouri said that the Sunni Conference could be considered the first in post-invasion Iraq, as no Sunni force had organized such a conference in Baghdad.

The aim of this conference, according to senior sources in the government, is to reach a political consensus paving the way to eliminate the sectarian legacy of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and convince those previously excluded to return to political work in Baghdad and help stabilize the liberated Sunni cities.

A senior Iraqi official also stressed that the success of the conference will result in a number of Arab resolutions in favor of Iraq.

The results include organizing a conference for donor countries to reconstruct the Sunni cities as well as opening embassies.

The official pointed out that the conference has won the consensus of the most important Gulf state, Saudi Arabia.

The UAE has reservations on the presence of Iraq's Muslim Brotherhood figures.

Seventy-four figures will attend the conference.

As of Monday, 74 people were invited to attend the conference, including prominent names who escaped from Iraq after the Iraqi judiciary issued arrest warrants against them under the Maliki government (2006-2014), including Tariq al-Hashemi, Rafea al-Issawi, Ethel al-Nujaifi, Ali al-Hatim al-Sulaiman and Saad al-Bazzaz, and others.

The list also includes other figures opposed to the political process, as well as MPs and politicians in Baghdad, most of them from the Iraqi Islamic Party (political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq).

In the same context, a senior Iraqi government official is visiting Jordan to arrange for the conference and meet a number of Sunni leaders.

The official explained that the conference is the result of the Istanbul conference held in February.

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