Aggrieved Shiites say Bahrain dialogue doomed to fail
\nJune 25, 2011 02:21 AM
\nBy Daily Star Staff<\/p>\n
MANAMA: A top Bahraini Shiite cleric said Friday that a national dialogue scheduled to start next week looked set to fail, as the opposition nursed \u201cpain and suffering\u201d from the jailing of protesters.<\/p>\n
Bahrain has tried dozens of people by military court in the wake of a fierce March crackdown by its Sunni rulers on mass protests led mostly by the Shiite majority. Hundreds, mostly Shiites, were arrested and many have yet to be charged.<\/p>\n
Sheikh Issa Qasim, the most revered Shiite cleric in the Gulf island kingdom, told the audience crammed into his village mosque that conditions for the talks due to start next Friday were not promising.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis dialogue says for itself it is a failure \u2026 It is difficult to reconcile what is happening on the ground with the call to dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
The criticism came less than a day after Bahrain\u2019s military court said it would move all the protest-linked trials it had not started to a civilian court.<\/p>\n
But authorities pressed ahead with plans for the dialogue yesterday.<\/p>\n
Crown Prince of Bahrain, Salman Bin Hamad al-Khalifah said in a statement on Al-Wasat newspaper that the dialogue would not serve \u201cone category of people without the other\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not work for one side without another, and our goal is to uplift all the Bahraini people because this is our historic responsibility that we are aiming to achieve and that is the goal the integral and unified concept of which his highness [the king] has observed through his reform program and the launching of the National Reconciliation Dialogue,\u201d the statement read. …more<\/a><\/p>\n