A top Iraqi official has said Baghdad has no evidence to link Iran with aiding the al Qaeda operations in his country though Tehran may be assisting extremist groups to fuel problems there.
"We don't have solid evidence that Iran is helping al Qaeda in Iraq. They are helping the Al-Mahdi. They are helping some of the extremist Shia groups in Iraq. But there is no evidence that Iran is helping al Qaeda or helping the insurgents in Iraq," Iraq's National Security Advisor Mowaffak al Rubaie said.
Al Rubaie also said on Saturday that the people who are afraid of the democracy in Iraq were funding extremism. He was responding to a question whether Iraqi insurgency is flush with funds and is competent of sustaining itself.
"There is a missing piece of information on that report, which is the fund from some of the Arab states around Iraq. Those countries are afraid of our democracy. And I wouldn't -- I'm not saying that these are the governments of these countries, but they are the businessmen.
"They are the Islamic movements in these countries, helping the insurgency to bring down the democracy in Iraq and tries to defeat the United States government -- or the US Army in Iraq," he said.
Refusing to name the countries, he said, "It's not one country. It's not two countries. It is more than that. This is a fight, or this is a war between the extremists and the moderates in the whole region. If they lose, they lose in the whole region. If they win, God forbid, they will disrupt the whole region again," al Rubaie said.
Al Rubaie brushed aside the threats from Iraqi groups that they would withdraw support to the government if Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki went ahead with his plans to meet US President George W Bush in Jordan this week.
Terming the threat as political posturing, he said, "It is an empty threat. This is a very stable government. It has the support of the three major communities and the three major parliamentary blocs in Iraq."
"This is a national unity government adopting a very good and aggressive national reconciliation and dialogue plan. And I don't think withdrawing or pulling a couple of people from the council of representatives off from the government, is going to bring down this government," he added.
