Maliki 'forced' pro-government demos

The former Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of "forcing school students and government employees to demonstrate to support him." A series of pro-government demonstrations have emerged out of the protest wave still sweeping Iraq, with thousands of Iraqis defending Maliki’s refusal to repeal counter-terrorism laws or permit the return of former Ba’ath Party cabinet members linked to Saddam Hussein back into government. Speaking in a press statement, al-Hashemi predicted "the increase of Iraq’s popular protests, as well as the sit-ins in Anbar and Samarra, Fallujah, Mosul and Baghdad." The former Vice President claimed what the country was witnessing represented the "result of years of injustice, marginalisation and exclusion" by Sunni rulers. Fears of another sectarian conflict in Iraq grew yesterday after a suicide bomber assassinated a Sunni member of parliament, Ifan Saadoun, in Fallujah, killing two others and wounding four more.