Feb 9, 2010, 10:20 GMT
Baghdad - Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi warned politicians against exploiting sectarian sentiment for electoral gain, in an interview published Tuesday.
His remarks came amid a boiling political dispute over whether some 500 candidates previously disqualified from running in the March elections because of their alleged connections to the former ruling Baath Party should be allowed to run.
'The danger in Iraq is ... that some characters and political entities (are) trying to make people believe that one entity is the enemy,' al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim, told the London-based daily al- Sharq al-Awsat.
'They're using this to scare people and to send them back to factional and sectarian trenches, to give them victory in the elections,' al-Hashemi charged.
Last week, Iraq's electoral commission said it was lifting the ban on the candidates, sparking protests in Baghdad and in predominantly Shiite cities in Iraq's south.
Officials in the mostly Shiite city of Basra, home to some of the world's largest oil fields, threatened to cut oil supplies from the city, the Dubai-based satellite news network al-Arabiya reported Monday.
'We will not allow Baath Party members to return to government,' Baghdad governor Salah al-Razak, of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite Dawaa Party, told a large crowd of protesters outside parliament the previous day.
'We call on our brothers in other provinces to root out the Baathists from all circles, and not allow a single one to remain after today,' al-Razak said.
Al-Hashemi accused 'some candidates' of using dangerous and unethical tactics to win votes and to smear his Al-Iraqia Alliance as promoting 'Baathist' ideas.
'Al-Iraqia is a political alliance as firm as the national project and the common national identity of Iraqis,' he said.
'I do not fear for al-Iraqia's image among voters. I fear for Iraq's social cohesion and national harmony,' the vice president said.
The ban, imposed in January by Shiite politicians with ties to Iran, had caused anger among many Iraqi Sunni Muslims, many of whom said they had already felt disenfranchised by changes to the country's electoral law late last year that they said would decrease their representation in the new polls.
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