伊拉克总理警告宗派暴力或蔓延

Arab governments are under threat from a plague of ferocious sectarianism. That's the warning from Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and it comes after the worst week of violence in Iraq since US troops withdrew in 2011. So what more did Mr al-Maliki have to say? I asked our Arab affairs editor Sebastian Ushier for his assessment.

Well, this was really him restating what he said earlier this week on Thursday when he talked of a danger of Iraq falling back into a sectarian war. I mean these tensions have been there for a long time ever since the US troops withdrew at the end of 2011. A simmering political crisis kicked off into a full-blown one which then led to more violence on the streets and that has continued, you know, the year and a half since the troops withdrew. Basically it pits the Shiah-led government, Mr Maliki's government against leaders of the Sunni minority who once ran the country under Saddam Hussein. They feel marginalised. They've demanded that Mr Maliki resign. They say that he's a tyrant, he's a dictator, that he's stirring these tensions himself. But today, at the Organisation of Islamic Conference, which is the meeting of leaders of Islamic world in Baghdad, he said that sectarianism which is ferocious, is dangerous and is coming from outside.