Iraq's defence minister slams Syria over terrorist attacks

Saadoun al-Dulaimi’s visit to Jordan follows Wednesday’s triple hotel suicide bombings in this kingdom’s capital, Amman, by the al Qaida in Iraq terror group, which killed 57 people.

“We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into Iraq to bring destruction and killings,” al-Dulaimi said after meeting Jordan’s prime minister in Amman.

“Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes no neighbouring capital will be saved,” al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press.

Al-Dulaimi also offered Iraq’s condolences and support to Jordan to try and find thse responsible for the hotel attacks, this kingdom’s deadliest ever, saying “we are partners in facing terrorism.”

“Amman’s ordeal and Jordan’s ordeal is the ordeal of all Iraqis,” he said. The terrorists’ “target is to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities.”

Jordan’s King Abdullah has said that the suicide bombers who targeted the Radisson SAS, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn hotels were likely to have been Iraqi and entered Jordan from either Syria or Iraq.

The Iraqi minister demanded more anti-terror support from Damascus, which is facing intense pressure from the United States and Iraq to shut its borders and stop al Qaida in Iraq-linked extremists allied to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi entering the country.

“Iraq is bordering several countries, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but why is it only the Syrian bordersthat I have complained more than once about?” al-Dulaimi said.

“We have a 620 kilometre (385 mile) border with this country and we have 620 problems with the Syrians,” he said. “It seems our brothers in Syria won’t like what we say in this critical period for the Syrians.”