BAGHDAD: Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister who scored a surprise win in the recent general election, has warned that Iraq risks descending into a new sectarian war. Mr Allawi said that since the bitterly contested election on March 7, in which his Iraqiya party list won 91 seats, political groups had abandoned efforts to build a united government and were regressing into sectarianism, encouraged by Iran.
Mr Allawi, who led the country for nine turbulent months in 2004 as a US-appointed transitional prime minister, warned that unless the US and its allies safeguarded Iraq's nascent democracy, renewed conflict could spread around the region. ''This conflict will not remain within the borders of Iraq,'' he said. ''It will spill over and it has the potential to reach the world at large, not just neighbouring countries.
''I feel … the international community has failed this country.''
Mr Allawi's warning came on the most deadly day of violence in Iraq this year, with at least 114 people killed and at least 300 wounded in a spate of shootings and explosions.
The attacks on Monday stood out from other spikes in bloodshed over the past year. They were marked by precise bombings and assassinations, in all corners of the country.
Twelve security officers were killed at Baghdad checkpoints by militants dressed as street cleaners and armed with pistols fitted with silencers.
The worst of the attacks took place in the Shiite heartland of Hilla in central Iraq, where a suicide bomber detonated a device amid a crowd that had gathered at the scene of two car bombings outside a textile factory. At least 43 people were confirmed dead.
Mr Allawi railed against a move by the incumbent Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and a theocratic Shiite Islamic list to create a coalition that excludes his list. ''They are going back to their original sectarian ways,'' he said.
