BAGHDAD: The Iraqi foreign ministry said on Sunday it had summoned the Saudi ambassador over comments he made to the media a day earlier regarding Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

“This constitutes... a breach of diplomatic protocol and is based on inaccurate information,” the ministry said in a statement about Saudi envoy Thamer al-Sabhan’s remarks, in which he said the Hashid Shaabi militia should leave the fight against the militant Islamic State (IS) group to the Iraqi army and official security forces in order to avoid aggravating sectarian tensions.

“The Hashid Shaabi are fighting terrorism and defending the country’s sovereignty and acting under the umbrella and command of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces,” the statement said, referring to the coalition of mainly Shia paramilitary groups.

Iraqi Shia lawmakers had responded angrily to the ambassador’s remarks, with some of them calling for his expulsion less than a month after he arrived in the country.

Thamer al-Sabhan is the first Baghdad-based Saudi ambassador in a quarter century, but while full diplomatic relations are restored, many Iraqi Shias view Riyadh as a supporter of militant groups and an enemy of their community.

Sabhan had said in interview with Al-Sumaria television that the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces were not wanted in Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas as “they are not accepted by the sons of Iraqi society”.

Iraq turned to Shia militia forces in 2014 to help counter the onslaught by IS, which had overrun large areas north and west of Baghdad.

While they have been a key part of the anti-IS fight and are widely supported by Iraqi Shias, many members of the Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities view at least some of the Hashed al-Shaabi’s main forces as hostile.

“The remarks of the Saudi ambassador indicate clear hostility and blatant interference in Iraqi affairs (and) his talking about the Hashed al-Shaabi in this way is considered a major insult,” Khalaf Abdulsamad, the head of the Dawa parliamentary list, said in a statement.

The foreign ministry should “preserve the dignity of the Iraqi state and summon the Saudi ambassador and expel him from Iraq,” he said.

And Hashed al-Shaabi spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi termed Sabhan an “ambassador of a state that supports terrorism” and called for Iraq to “expel this ambassador and punish him for his statements”.

But the Alliance of Iraqi Forces, the main Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, described the ambassador’s remarks as “very natural” and criticised the “political campaign” against him.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2016