Bahrain opposition demands army withdrawal from streets

PanARMENIAN.Net - Bahrain's main Shiite opposition group said that the government must resign and the army pull off the streets of the capital before it will take up an offer of dialogue from the crown prince.

"To consider dialogue, the government must resign and the army should withdraw from the streets" of Manama, said Abdul Jalil Khalil Ibrahim, parliamentary leader of the Islamic National Accord Association (Al-Wefaq), the largest Shiite opposition bloc.

"What we're seeing now is not the language of dialogue but the language of force," he said, referring to the government's crackdown on protesters Friday in which he said 95 people were wounded, three of them "clinically dead".

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the violence in a phone conversation with King Hamad, a key regional ally of Washington, AFP reported.