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04/10/2006:

"Mubarak: US must not leave Iraq yet"

The Egyptian president says civil war has broken out in Iraq and the conflict would spread and worsen if US forces left the country.

Hosni Mubarak also told Arabic channel Al Arabiya on Saturday that many in the large Shia Muslim populations of Arab states around Iraq were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries.

Asked what effect an immediate US troop withdrawal would have, he said: "Now? It would be a disaster... It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up not just in Iraq, but in very many places.

"It's not on the threshold [of civil war]. It's pretty much started. There are Sunnis, Shia, Kurds and those types which come from Asia."

"I do not know when the situation in Iraq will stabilise. I personally do not see a solution to the problem in Iraq, which is practically destroyed now."
aljazeera.net