Dissenting voices in Iraq gov't rising

Al-Hashemi, the vice president due to visit the White House next month, said he did not see the point of categorizing the violence raging in Iraq _ the U.N. says an average of 100 Iraqis are killed every day at present _ as a civil war.

"But I want to say in all honesty that Iraq is undergoing a very huge calamity," he said in an interview aired Tuesday on Baghdad, the television station of his Iraqi Islamic Party.

"All this suffering has placed Iraq way beyond what happened in Lebanon's civil war," he said.

The analogy between Iraq's violence and Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war was used by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week, who also told the British Broadcasting Corp., that Iraqis may have reason to think their life now is worse than it was under ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

"The situation is difficult. Iraq is going through an unprecedented predicament," said al-Hashemi.

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