The leader of Bahrain's main Shia opposition party said on Sunday his goal was to help bring political reform, rejecting accusations of taking orders from Iran or seeking to install Shia religious rule. Sheikh Ali Salman, head of the opposition group Wefaq, said his party supported the Al Khalifa family as rulers and wanted to help the government with constitutional reforms.
"We said we want a constitutional monarchy, not a republic. We are for a gradual move to a democratic system, so we are not against the ruling family," Salman told Reuters in an interview. Bahrain brought in Saudi and United Arab Emirates forces in March to help break up a democracy movement inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. At least 29 people were killed in the unrest, all but six of them Shias.
Since then, dozens of Shia places of worship have been demolished, four people have died in custody and two Bahraini journalists working for foreign media were beaten last week.
Twenty-one opposition figures - seven of whom are abroad - are now on military trial on charges of seeking to overthrow the system and rights activists say they were tortured. Many belong to Shia groups that called for replacing the monarchy with a republic but Salman said Wefaq was not one of them and no Wefaq figures were on trial.
He said that in indirect talks with the government up to the day Saudi troops came, Wefaq's aim was to rea6ch an agreement on elections for an assembly to approve a new constitution ending the domination of royal appointees in parliament. Sheikh Abdullatif Al-Mahmoud, head of the mainly Sunni National Unity Rally, has accused Wefaq of taking orders from Iran.
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