JEDDAH - The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called for calm in Iraq on Saturday after the hanging of Saddam Hussein, and urged Muslim clerics to implement a pact banning the shedding of Muslim blood.
In a statement issued at its headquarters in Jeddah, the 57-member OIC said its secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu "appealed to the Iraqi people to stay calm" following the execution of the former president.
He also called on prominent Iraqi clerics to "implement the Mecca Document ... by urging the Iraqi people to remain united," the statement said.
That document, hammered out by 29 Iraqi Shiite and Sunni clerics at an OIC-sponsored meeting in the Muslim holy city of Mecca in October, called for a halt to sectarian bloodletting in Iraq.
Though it stipulated that "spilling Muslim blood is forbidden," the Mecca Document went unheeded in Iraq, where Shiite-Sunni killings continued unabated.
Saddam was executed in Baghdad at dawn Saturday as Muslims began celebrating the religious holiday of Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice) and more than two million faithful performed the annual hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.
12/30/2006 13:32 GMT