London Sunday Telegraph
October 9, 2005

By Con Coughlin

Iraq will collapse into chaos unless its new constitution is approved in this week's nationwide referendum, the country's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has warned.

Mr Zebari told The Sunday Telegraph that the country would rapidly collapse into political anarchy if Iraqis rejected the constitution.

"If the constitution is approved we can have elections in December and elect a government that is fully representative of the Iraqi people. The alternative would be complete chaos," he said.

Mr Zebari, who travelled to London last week with Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, for talks with Tony Blair, said that the successful implementation of the new constitution would enable coalition forces to begin planning for their eventual withdrawal from Iraq. "The new government [elected in December's elections] will be in a far better position to defeat the insurgency, which is still being orchestrated mainly by the Ba'athist remnants of the old regime," said Mr Zebari.

"But with a new constitution and a new government, all Iraqis will have to reassess their relationship with the new government. No one will be able to question its legitimacy in future."

He refused to be drawn on a possible timetable for the withdrawal of coalition forces, but was hopeful that security would improve dramatically in the New Year.

"If the coalition forces were not in Iraq I believe the country would rapidly disintegrate into civil war," he said. "The fact that we still have the coalition has prevented different factions from taking matters into their own hands. We need the coalition forces to remain in Iraq until the country is stabilised." Mr Zebari, who is Kurdish, said that all the main ethnic groups had made painful concessions to get the constitution through the drafting process.

He believed that the successful implementation of the new constitution, together with the forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and the other leaders of the Ba'athist dictatorship, will help to return the country to normality. "Our biggest battle is with the remnants of the old regime. Once we can demonstrate that they have no chance of coming back, they will realise that their struggle is pointless."

Mr Zebari is keen for Iraq to take a firmer line with its neighbours, particularly Syria, which are allowing foreign fighters to enter the country to link up with the insurgency. "These people are killing innocent Iraqis, and that is not acceptable.

Originally Posted by Doody

If you plan on only posting an article without any input or insight from yourself, post your article in one of the two news forums. Failure to do so with result in your thread being locked

Team Infidel,

If you do not add in any opinion of your own, I will move this article to one of the news forums. By all means use an article or source to spark a discussion. Adding your opinion is the difference between posting here and not one of the news forums. Thanks

Doody

no problem. I would be happy to. I just wanted to weigh in after others have posted their opinion.