IRAQ's national security adviser yesterday accused some neighbours of conducting a proxy war inside Iraq to serve their own interests.
In a strongly worded address on the closing day of a major security meeting in Bahrain, Dr Mowaffak Al Rubaie also stated Iraq had started an irreversible march towards adopting Western values.
He added there would be no lasting peace in the Gulf until the US directly engaged in talks with both Syria and Iran.
"From where we sit in Baghdad and from an Iraqi perspective, we look at the region and see competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran has turned into conflict on the soil of Iraq," he told delegates at the Manama Dialogue.
"We cannot continue playing Tehran and co versus Riyadh and co, otherwise we will continue suffering in this region."
In addition to that standoff, he said Iraqis also recognised there was a conflict involving "the industrialised West and our resource-rich region".
He said it was time Saudi Arabia and Iran led regional countries in overcoming the Middle East's bloody history to forge a future of peace and prosperity for all.
"A decade of simmering conflict has kept us apart, fighting amongst ourselves, rather than co-operating for the good of the region, its people and the world," said Dr Al Rubaie.
"The choice is ours: either regional reconciliation or regional pettiness.
"One of the serious problems we encounter in Iraq is due to the conflicting regional interests inside the country.
"Iraq is a crossroads, it is a junction where the Arab Muslim world meets the non-Arab Muslim world.
"Some of the regional countries are tempted to meddle in Iraqi internal affairs.
"Of course it is natural - weak bodies attract viruses from outside."
Dr Al Rubaie was clear that much of the instability in his country bore the fingerprints of its neighbours.
"Some of the regional countries are helping fuel the sectarian conflict and maintaining the political stagnation in my country," he said.
"They can play a more positive role in encouraging the reluctant parties to join the political process and to help in the national reconciliation programme the government started in May last year."
Reconciliation talks have already borne fruit, he said, citing a drop in the quantities of arms being smuggled to militias from Iran, tighter controls introduced by Saudi Arabia to prevent its young men from crossing its border into Iraq to join jihadist groups and better security screening at Damascus airport, Syria, as proof that progress was being made in tempering foreign influence in Iraq.
He also said that soon-to-be-concluded talks on a long-term US presence in Iraq would leave his country's neighbours in no doubt as to its ultimate path.
"We have started the process of a strategic partnership agreement with the US, a long-term relationship of co-operation and friendship between Iraq and the United States that will be of great relief for all the GCC countries and all the countries in the region," he said.
"This is to ensure that the strategic direction of Iraq is very clear to everybody in the region. We are heading West.
"For the US in the region I have this message: unless the United States seriously engages with Iran and Syria, long-term regional security will be in doubt."
He also had strong words for the GCC, who he accused of being standoffish with Iraq - a stance he said meant they ran the risk of missing out on hugely lucrative reconstruction contracts.
"If GCC countries continue to be imprisoned by their paranoia or scepticism of Iranian influence on the central government of Iraq, of Shia-Kurd dominance of Baghdad, for how long is it going to go on?" he asked.
"What you have in Iraq is a democratic, parliamentary constitutional system, and that is what you have to accept."
Ultimately only by coming together with a clean slate can the countries of the region fulfil their potential, he added.
"Our promise in this region is unrealised," he said.
"Our gift to the world is much more than oil and its benefits.
"In this region, divided we will fall into Shia versus Sunni, but united we rise to become an example of unity and the benefits that come from human diversity."
