Get out of Iraq, Iran tells UK and US

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Britain and the United States of widening divisions between Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, saying Washington was “the cause of the problem” in the war-torn country.

He said Britain and America should “get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqi people alone”.

His comments came a day after President Bush met Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki, urging the Iraqi leader to crack down on Shiite militias blamed in sectarian violence. Iran is believed to back some of the militias.

Mr Ahmadinejad spoke in an interview with the Arab news network Al-Jazeera during a visit to the Qatari capital Doha to attend the opening of the Asian Games.

In Doha, the Iranian leader held talks with Palestinian prime miister Ismail Haniyeh, from the militant Hamas movement, which is allied to Iran.

Ahmadinejad repeated Iran’s calls for the United States to pull its troops out of Iraq.

Iraqis “know how to govern themselvs and provide their own security. You are the reason of the problem,” he told Al-Jazeera, looking at the camera and addressing the United States and Britain.

“Get out of Iraq and leave the Iraqi people alone.”

He accused Washington of worsening tensions between Iraq’s deeply divided communities, saying it is “afraid of an independent Iraq.”

“We know that the Americans and the Britons want to leave Iraq. But they want to leave a scorched earth for the Iraqi people,” he said.

“They have started doing things like creating sedition among Iraqis – Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds and Shiites.”

“They also want to weaken the government that had been elected by the Iraqi people and intervene in the internal affairs,” he said.

The Bush administration is pressing president Maliki to step up reconciliation efforts with Iraq’s Sunni Arabs in an attempt to stem the country’s spiralling violence. Some Sunni leaders are pressing for a greater role in the Cabinet.

Shiite parties, most of them allied to Iran, dominate Iraq’s parliament and government since January elections. Mr Ahmadinejad’s comments may reflect opposition to significant government changes to bring in more Sunnis.

:: Troops in Iraq who threw themselves on grenades to save the lives of their comrades could receive the US Medal of Honour.

Michael Monsoor had just an instant to react when a hand grenade was tossed into his rooftop hideout in Iraq.

“He was thinking, ‘I could run for it or I could throw it’,” said George Monsoor, the Navy SEAL’s father, adding: “Instead, he fell on it.”

The 25-year-old Californian who liked fast cars and snowboarding is among a small number of soldiers in Iraq who died after throwing themselves on a grenade to save others.

One was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honour, the United States’ highest military award. Michael and another Californian, 25-year-old Rafael Peralta, are being considered for the decoration.

Since the First World War, there had been an increasing tendency to award the Medal of Honour for saving comrades rather than for “war-winning” acts of aggression, said Joseph Blake, a sociologist who researched the act of soldiers throwing themselves on grenades.

“What has been happening is a shift away from gung-ho aggressive things to aiding and supporting one’s comrades,” he said.

Mr Blake said the kind of extraordinary sacrifice of a falling on a grenade is more likely in close-knit units.

“A combat situation has not a whole lot to do with patriotism or the folks back home,” Mr Blake said. “They are fighting for their buddies. They don’t want to let their buddies down.”

Peralta, a Marine, was shot during a house-to-house search in Fallujah. Lying wounded, he grabbed a grenade that had been tossed in by an insurgent. The blast killed him.

“If he wouldn’t have scooped up the grenade, the other three of us in the room that day would have been killed,” said former Cpl Robert Reynolds, who was in Peralta’s squad.

Reynolds said Peralta sacrificed himself because “he wanted to make sure we all went home”.