Fugitive vice-president Hashemi says Iraq violence part of a 'Sunni Arab revolt'

The violence in Iraq is part of a broader Sunni Arab revolt that could lead to a holy war in the country, and is not just a rampage by Islamist militants from an al-Qaeda splinter group, fugitive vice president Tarek al-Hashemi told Reuters on June 16.

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have routed Baghdad's army and seized the north of the country in the past week, threatening to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian war.

"What happened in my country ... is desperate people revolted. Simple as that. Arab Sunni communities over 11 years faced discrimination, injustice, corruption," Hashemi said, rejecting the suggestion that militants from ISIL, also known as ISIS, alone were responsible.

"We do have about 11 to 12 armed groups, and they are being reactivated now. And we do also have political parties involved, we have ex-army officers, we have tribes, we have independent people in fact," he said in an interview in Istanbul.

Hashemi, a Sunni sentenced to death in 2012 after an Iraqi court convicted him of running death squads while vice president, something he denies, has long accused Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of a witch-hunt against his Sunni opponents.

"We have many groups beside ISIS. I am not going to deny that ISIS are existing, that ISIS are not influential. No, they are influential, very strong, could be a vanguard even in the whole operation in Mosul and other provinces, but they are not representing the whole spectrum of the groups," Hashemi said.

Shiite cleric's fatwa 'fuel on fire'

He warned the situation could descend into a full-blown religious war and said Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had fanned the flames when...