Chairman of Iraq's Democratic Party, Mithal al-Alusi, surprisingly arrived at a conference on terror in Herzliya on Wednesday, calling for the establishment of a joint intelligence network with Israel and the United States.
Alusi at the funeral of his two sons who were killed in an assassination attempt in Baghdad in 2005.
Photo: AP
During a panel dedicated to the lessons of the battle against guerrillas in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, the master of ceremonies surprised listeners when he said Al-Alusi was in the audience and invited him to the podium. Al-Alusi was received with roaring applause. "In Israel, there is no occupation, there is liberalism," Al-Alusi, who is making his third trip to the Jewish State, told the audience. "We not only have elections but also a democratic education. Throughout Iraq, there are people who have never gone to school and have not participated in the election. Today they know there's such a thing as democratic elections."
Al-Alusi devoted some of his time to criticizing the Iranian regime. He claimed the Islamic Republic was continually meddling in Iraq's affairs. According to him, Iran enjoyed the fact that America was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan because this meant that Iran could continue with its nuclear race smoothly.
"The Iranian ambassador visited me and spoke to me about the ties with Israel and the US. He offered me and my party a large sum of money. That's how the Iranians work. One cannot trust them, they invest in terror groups, money means nothing to them," he said.
At the end of his brief appearance, Al-Alusi called for the joint intelligence network. "It is not enough that Israel has good intelligence and the US has good intelligence, we need to come together and have all intelligence systems cooperate," he said. "Partnership between Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and the US will ensure that we have the correct information and can respond fast."
Alusi made his first trip to Israel in September 2004 to participate in a counter-terrorism conference. Apparently as payback, extremists murdered his two sons, 22 and 30.
The terrorists "will try to kill more. They will try to stop us. It should give us power to continue, to believe in ourselves," he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview back then.
Al-Alusi was given the American Jewish Committee's Moral Courage award following his sons' deaths.
Hilary Leila Krieger contributed to this report
