ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Leaders representing Iraq’s Sunni factions are set to gather in Erbil for a second time to adopt a unified stance against the radical Sunni group fighting under the banner of the Islamic State (ISIS), a Kurdish Islamic party official said Monday.
“The Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) will support any effort that is aimed at saving Iraq from the current crisis,” the KIU’s Muhammad Rauf told Rudaw.
“The main problem Sunnis face in Iraq is lack of a recognized Sunni authority which everyone could follow,” he added.
Mosul’s exiled governor Osama Nujaifi, a Sunni, has pushed Sunni tribal leaders in Nineveh province, where Mosul is the capital, to distance themselves from ISIS.
Last month, Nujaifi said Sunni volunteers have registered “in their hundreds” to take up arms against ISIS.
Rauf said even the Kurdish Islamic parties that are defined as Sunnis have been invited to the congress in Erbil, along with religious and political leaders of the Sunni communities in Iraq.
In a deeply sectarian country the Shiites -- who constitute over half of Iraq’s population -- took an immediate stance against ISIS, which views Shiites as infidels.
But Iraq’s large Sunni minority, which has often accused the predominately Shiite government in Baghdad of sectarianism, has had conflicting views about ISIS, which has promised Sunnis their own state.
“Sunnis need to come together and take a firm stance against ISIS because it has no future for them,” Rauf said.
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