Iraq won’t be used for proxy wars: Barham

Iraqi President Barham Saleh told the United Nations General Assembly gathering on Wednesday that “Iraq will not be a launching pad for aggression against any of our neighboring countries.”

Iraq is squeezed between the two powerful rivals in the region, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Some have questioned whether attacks earlier this month on Saudi Arabian oil installations could have been launched from Iraq. Iraq has denied that.

He called the attacks in Saudi Arabia a dangerous development.

Saleh bemoaned that Iraq has long been unstable but struck a positive note, saying his country was emerging from years of conflict and looking toward economic development.

On Tuesday US-led coalition forces in Baghdad had said that attacks on coalition personnel and facilities in Iraq “will not be tolerated,” adding that coalition forces retain the right to self-defence.

No coalition or US-occupied facility was struck in Monday night’s attack in which two Katyusha rockets were fired into the heavily fortified Green Zone, according to a statement issued by the coalition and Iraqi security forces.

The rockets landed few hundred meters (yards) away from the US Embassy compound’s perimeters, triggering alert sirens that sounded across the capital’s Tigris River.

“We take this incident seriously as do our Iraqi security forces partners,” the coalition statement said.

No side has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes amid heightened tensions in the region following an attack on Saudi oil installations that the US has blamed on Iran. Similar attacks in the past have sometimes been blamed by Iraqi forces on Iranian-backed militias in Baghdad.

The militias have recently said they will retaliate to a series of airstrikes that have targeted their bases and weapons depots in recent weeks. No one has claimed the attacks but Israel, which frequently targets Iranian interests in neighboring Syria, is believed to be behind at least some of them.

Some Iran-backed groups have publicly blamed Israel and its US ally by extension. A member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, the umbrella group for Iran-backed militias, said the forces fired the rockets at the Green Zone from the Dora district southwest of the capital. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give this information. A senior security official refrained from pointing fingers and said authorities were still investigating Tuesday night’s rocket attack.

Agencies