ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Iraqi government has asked Saudi Arabia to stop interfering in its internal affairs in a strong statement a day after the Saudi foreign minister said that the Shiite militia group known as Hashd al-Shaabi must be disbanded. The Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs said that “it condemns the repeated interference of the Saudi foreign ministry in Iraq’s internal affairs,” said Ahmed Jamal, the ministry spokesperson. The statement from Baghdad comes a day after Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir said that the Shiite militia was a sectarian group backed by Iran and that it must be disbanded. The Iraqi foreign ministry said that Saudi Arabia tries to address its own regional conflict with other countries by interfering Iraq’s domestic affairs. “The Popular Mobilization is an official body formed of volunteers from all Iraqi components, which is a part of the national defence system, acting under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and is financed by the state budget” the statement explained. Earlier this month when the Iraqi army and Shia militias began an operation to retake the city of Fallujah from the Islamic State (ISIS), the Saudi Ambassador Thamer Al-Sabhan said on Twitter that Iranian forces were involved in the battle and that they sought to punish Iraq’s Sunnis. “The presence of Iranian terrorist personalities near Fallujah proves that they want to burn the Arab Iraqis in the fire of sectarianism.” Al-Sabhan tweeted. Iraqi Shiite officials reacted by calling on the government to revoke the Saudi ambassador’s credentials. The government decided that summoning the ambassador to the foreign ministry and giving him a lesson on diplomacy would suffice. “The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already summoned the ambassador of the brotherly kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Baghdad, and informed him that the Ambassador should be subjected to the international norms and conventions concerning how ambassadors should interact with the media,” the Iraqi ministry said on June 17. Saudi Arabia suspended diplomatic ties with Iraq in 1990 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Twenty-five years later the Saudi Embassy reopened in Baghdad at the end of 2015.
