Move to ban inter-sect fighting

Riyadh: Iraqi Sunni and Shiite religious leaders are planning to sign in Saudi Arabia a declaration that forbids inter-Islamic fighting, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference said yesterday.

"Four representatives of Sunni and Shiite parties started yesterday a preparatory meeting in Makkah ... to draft the covenant," the OIC's undersecretary for political affairs Izzat Mufti said.

He said that the document will be discussed during a meeting of Iraqi religious leaders, which will take place in Makkah before the end of Ramadan.

"This meeting aims to ban the fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in order to avoid a civil war" in Iraq, he said, adding that it is an OIC initiative "to help in ending the killings and bombings".

Mufti said Iraq's revered Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani is strongly in favour of holding the meeting, but he did not disclose names of the Iraqi figures who will be attending.

The initiative came as a suicide bomber rammed a police checkpoint in northern Iraq with an explosives-laden vehicle yesterday, killing more than a dozen people in the deadliest attack on a day when at least 25 people died in violence around the country.