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Kerry: Iraq should pick its leaders

Secretary kicks off Mideast trip in Cairo

In this photo provided by Egypt’s state news agency MENA, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi before a meeting at the presidential palace in Cairo on Sunday. (Associated Press)
Laura King Los Angeles Times

CAIRO – Secretary of State John Kerry, on a Middle East mission to help stave off the unraveling of Iraq, said Sunday it was up to the Iraqi people to decide who should lead them – but pointedly noted wishes across the Iraqi political spectrum to “not continue the mistakes of the past.”

The secretary, starting his regional trip with a stop in Cairo, also sought to dampen Arab states’ funding of opposition groups in Syria, pointing to the Iraq crisis as proof of the dangers of the spillover effect of the Syrian civil war.

In the Egyptian capital, the secretary met President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi for the first time since the former military chief took office two weeks ago. Kerry voiced support for more personal freedoms for Egyptians, but also employed conciliatory rhetoric meant to repair a relationship soured by mistrust in nearly a year since el-Sissi led a military coup against his elected but widely reviled predecessor, Islamist Mohammed Morsi.

El-Sissi overwhelmingly won last month’s presidential election with promises of an emphasis on security and repairing Egypt’s battered economy.

The Obama administration has been critical of the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood that began with Morsi’s ouster. On Saturday, an Egyptian court upheld death sentences for 183 alleged backers of the movement, which has been declared a terrorist organization. The case was one of many instances of mass tribunals resulting in harsh penalties for backers of the Islamist group.

But the firestorm in Iraq, where Sunni militants are seizing wide bands of territory in their attempt to create an Islamic state spanning the Syrian border and beyond, heightens the strategic importance of a stable alliance between Washington and Cairo.

The Obama administration last year froze hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Egypt, the second-largest recipient of American foreign assistance, but has been moving to restore much of it.

In Iraq, the U.S. has been trying to persuade hard-line Shiite Muslim Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to move swiftly to reverse exclusionary sectarian policies that have alienated the country’s Sunni minority. But there is also widespread sentiment both inside and outside Iraq that al-Maliki is not the right person to lead the country out of the current crisis.

Kerry, at a news conference in Cairo, said Washington was not trying to orchestrate al-Maliki’s ouster.

“Let me just say that the United States is not engaged in picking or choosing or advocating for one individual or series of individuals to assume the leadership of Iraq,” he said. “That is up to the Iraqi people.”

But he pointed to Kurds, Sunnis and even some fellow Shiites expressing dissatisfaction with al-Maliki’s leadership and stressed the need for a government in Baghdad that will “represent all the Iraqi people.”

From Cairo, Kerry was traveling on to Amman, Jordan.