Iraq warns of severing ties with Sweden if Quran burning happens again

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi premier’s office on Thursday announced that it had warned Sweden through diplomatic channels that if Quran burning takes place again in the country, it would sever ties with the Nordic country, according to a statement.

The remarks came after a high-level and emergency meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani on Thursday morning with his key ministers, including Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, hours after hundreds of protestors stormed Sweden's Embassy in Baghdad and set it on fire.

“The Iraqi government has informed the Swedish government through diplomatic channels that any recurrence of the incident involving the burning of the Holy Qur’an on Swedish soil would necessitate severing diplomatic relations,” the office wrote in a statement.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Fuad Hussein on Wednesday had a phone call with his Swedish counterpart to discuss the Quran burning, according to a statement. 

The torch of the embassy this time has been triggered by granting permission by the Swedish authorities to an Iraqi member of the diaspora community who had said he would set the Iraqi flag and a copy of the holy Quran on fire outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm. In late June and on the Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha, he had set a copy of the holy book on fire. 

The government "strongly condemned" the embassy's torching, vowing to take legal measures against those who set the diplomatic post on fire, according to the statement. 

The Swedish embassy staff was evacuated before the attack, which is the second of its kind in less than a month. Finnish news agency STT reported that the diplomatic staff of Finland's embassy has similarly been evacuated. 

The Scandinavian country’s foreign minister on Thursday slammed the Iraqi authorities’ failure in protecting the diplomatic mission and Iraqi Chargé d'affaires had been summoned. 

The Iraqi Shiite firebrand Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose supporters constituted the majority of those that had stormed the embassy, said Sweden has announced its hostility against Iraq by granting permission to burn the holy book and Iraqi flag.

While condemning attacks on religious and ethnic communities, the Swedish authorities have said on many occasions that they had allowed the June protestor, an Iraqi immigrant in Sweden, to burn a copy of the Quran under the freedom of expression pretext, a justification most in the Muslim world has vehemently rejected. 

The United Nations Human Rights Council has recently condemned the burning of the holy book as a "religious hate act".