King Abdullah; Iran is ready to cooperate to avoid Iraqi civil war

The Jordanian King Abdullah II said yesterday that Iran can be ready to cooperate with neighboring states and with the US to avoid a civil war in Iraq and the partition of it.

King Abdullah who recently made a visit to Tehran said in a statement to the US PBS TV station that the Iranians feel real concern that the expansion of scale of violence will be conducive to a civil war in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.

He added "we agree that a partition of Iraq will be a great problem for all of us." He added that the Iranian President Muhammad Khatami considers that confrontation between the Iraqi Shiite and Sunni will be worse than confrontation between various Shiite factions and he had felt in his talks in Tehran that the Iranians want to stop sectarian and ethnic acts of violence.

He added "the important thing is that (the Iranians) consider destabilization and sectarian conflicts will constitute a catastrophe for all of us. Therefore there are enough number of matters of agreement among us to work for."