Brussels, 17/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - In the view of Humam Hamoudi, the leader of the Iraqi Parliament's foreign affairs committee, the security problem currently affecting Iraq is “linked to the situation in Syria, especially to the large-scale assistance that countries are offering the fighters”, whom he believes are small groups of terrorists whose sphere of influence goes beyond the Syrian borders. “There are explosions nearly every day and dozens of victims”, he told MEPs on 16 September. However, in Hamoudi's opinion, faced with the attacks, there is “an understanding and an interaction between the different political entities”. He stressed that Iraq's problem is not a religious clash between Sunnis and Shiites.
Hamoudi sought to present an optimistic picture about the future - “Iraq is moving forward on the right track” even if the country “is suffering from what is happening in Syria and in the Gulf countries”.
Elsewhere, he called on the EU to train Iraqi civil servants. “The EU could propose training courses for Iraqi civil servants. Three thousand have been trained in Japan and I think that the EU could do as much”, he said. (CG/transl.fl)