“We are saying openly that it is either governmental institutions or coalition forces that are responsible for order,” Russian presidential envoy for international cooperation in fighting terrorism and transnational organized crime Anatoly Safonov, was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Speaking to journalists in Moscow, Safonov added “First of all — and I hope this will be also said at the UN — we need to emphasize the uniqueness of the situation concerning security in Iraq, express our condemnation of what has happened, and call for drawing conclusions from this”.
First Vice-Speaker of the Russian State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, also blamed the U.S. occupation for the diplomat’s killing.
“We can see how the coalition forces are ’restoring order’,” she said.
“Every day dozens of innocent people are dying, and now diplomats are geting killed, too. The responsibility for what is going on in Iraq lies upon those who sought mass destruction weapons here, but found nothing.”
* Russia to “find and destroy” killers
President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s special services to “find and destroy” the killers of four Russian diplomats in Iraq, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, according to the BBC.
"The president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals" who killed the Russians, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin also said Russia "will be grateful to all its friends for any information on the criminals," the statement added.
The head of Russia’s security services, Nikolai Patrushev, immediately pledged to execute Putin’s orders, saying that the killers will not “escape from responsibility”, the Interfax news agency reported.
Putin’s order came after Moscow confirmed that four Russian Embassy workers, who were kidnapped in Iraq earlier this month, have been killed.
The captors, who posted a video showing the killings on the Internet, had demanded the Russian government to leave Chechnya and release all Muslim detainees.
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman refused to say whether any Russian special forces were currently in Iraq, but he noted that there are “people responsible for security at the embassy” in Baghdad.
In a separate development, the lower house of the Russian parliament passed a statement denouncing the killings, and blaming the occupation forces in Iraq.
"The whole responsibility for the situation in Iraq, including guaranteeing the security of its citizens, and also foreign specialists, as before lies on the occupying powers," the statement said.
Russia has strongly opposed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
* Armed groups want to join reconciliation initiative
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said that some armed groups contacted him to join his reconciliation initiative, Reuters reported.
“I am optimistic and I confirm that a lot of those who were involved in acts under the name of resistance ... have directly contacted us," Nuri al-Maliki told Iraqiya state television.
"And some of them have contacted other parts of the government and they are willing to join the political process and lay down their weapons and we welcome that."
Earlier this week, Maliki announced a reconciliation plan, which offers an amnesty for rebels and opposition figures, as part of the government’s efforts to curb violence that has plagued Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
The Prime Minister has been under pressure over his plan. Some Iraqi officials say it doesn’t detail how he plans to avert a civil war.
U.S. politicians also pressure the government to exclude killers of American soldiers from any amnesty. But Sunni leaders insist that the attacks against U.S. forces are “legitimate resistance” against foreign occupiers.
Maliki stressed today that “those involved in killing Iraqis, crimes, military attacks and bombings will not be released, even those who targeted foreigners, whether multinational forces or journalists.”
In a separate development, the Iraqi government announced the arrest of a key suspect in the February 22 bombing of a revered Shia shrine in the holy city of Samarra.
National security adviser Mowaffaq Al-Rubaie said the man, a Tunisian identified as Abu Qudama, was one of seven Al-Qaeda members wanted for the shrine attack, which led to a sharp rise in sectarian attacks across the war-torn country.
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