Bahrain Opposition Urges UN Intervention Against Crackdown

Opposition Factions Urge Govt to Accept Talks

by Jason Ditz, March 20, 2011

Bahrain’s Shi’ite opposition took two separate paths in its efforts to end what has been a very violent crackdown against protesters by the Bahraini government and thousands of Saudi-led foreign troops.

Primarily, the opposition issued a statement today calling on the Sunni-ruled government to accept political talks that would put the nation on a track to “real democracy.” The Crown Prince of Bahrain had been pressing for such talks, but that has largely stopped since the Saudi invasion.

At the same time, the 18 opposition MPs who resigned from Bahrain’s parliament to protest the crackdown petitioned the United Nations in general and the United States in particular to demand an end to the foreign military presence and to help mediate the talks with the regime.

Both calls seem unlikely to bear immediate fruit at this point. The Bahrain regime seems to have abandoned the pretense of talks in favor of imposing a military solution. Though the US has expressed some vague opposition to the violence in Bahrain, there appears to be little interest in seeing the regime, a longtime US ally, fall to the protesters.

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