National reconciliation conference postponed
Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) The national reconciliation conference planned for November 15 in Cairo has been postponed sine die. Senior Arab League official Ahmed ben Hilli, who was in Iraq to prepare the meeting, said today that problems have emerged.
A meeting in the Egyptian capital on November 19 is expected to take place now to prepare the ground for a main conference to be held later.
An Arab League delegation has been visiting Baghdad to persuade as many representatives from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni Arab, Kurdish and other communities to participate. The goal is to bridge the profound sectarian rifts that have come to the fore following the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Meanwhile, the funeral of Adil al-Zubeidi, a Shiite defence attorney for one of the former dictator's co-accused, took place. He was ambushed and killed yesterday in Baghdad.
This comes less than three weeks after another defence lawyer, Saadoun al-Jananbi, was murdered.
Saddam's trial is scheduled to resume November 28, but the defence team announced it would not be in the court room as long as its members' security is not guaranteed and an international investigation into the latest attacks is not carried out.
Increasingly, many observers doubt that Saddam Hussein can ever be tried in Iraq. Richard Goldstone, the first prosecutor at the UN tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, said Iraq's government should consider shifting the trial to an Arab country "where there is security" for witnesses, judges or defence counsel.
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