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Iraq To Elect Speaker, President In Move Toward Power-Sharing Deal

Iraqi parliamentarians are set to elect a speaker of the house as well as the country's president, the first steps necessary to cement a still-emerging coalition government agreement that would see Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki keep his position for a second term.
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Πεμ, 11 Νοεμβρίου 2010 - 18:56
Iraqi parliamentarians are set to elect a speaker of the house as well as the country's president, the first steps necessary to cement a still-emerging coalition government agreement that would see Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki keep his position for a second term.

Maliki's chief rival, Ayad Allawi, and his political bloc, Iraqiya, decided to accept a role in the power-sharing agreement after a phone call Thursday morning from President Barack Obama to Allawi, according to two officials familiar with the situation. Allawi, a former interim Iraqi Prime Minister, had been reluctant to approve the agreement hammered out late Wednesday after an eight-month-long political impasse, because it was unclear how significant the roles were that had been reserved for him and his allies.

(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com).

Iraqiya, the narrow winner of the March elections and the representative of Iraq's Sunni constituency, has faced the possibility of being squeezed out of prominent government jobs as Maliki has gained momentum in recent weeks in cobbling together nearly enough political groups to form a majority coalition in parliament. That has caused concern in Washington , where U.S. officials fear that excluding the group from power could result in an upsurge of sectarian violence much like what happened after the 2005 elections.

Political negotiations this week between Maliki's State of Law alliance, Iraqiya and the powerful Kurdish Alliance ended late Wednesday with the promise of Iraqiya receiving the post of parliamentary speaker as well as the chairmanship of a new security council that apparently is intended to act as a counterweight to Maliki and the Shiite-led government that he has presided over for the last four years.

However, the new council, known as the National Council on Higher Policy, has yet to be written into law and its functions and powers remain unknown. That ambiguity left some in Iraqiya waffling over whether to endorse the power-sharing agreement and how to ensure that the new council head wouldn't occupy a purely ceremonial position without hefty responsibilities.

Obama, in his phone call to Allawi on Thursday, promised to throw U.S. weight behind the process and guarantee that the council would retain meaningful and legal power, according to the two officials with knowledge of the phone call.

Underscoring the fragility of the deal, Iraqiya officials said that they would pull out of the power-sharing agreement after one month's time if lawmakers hadn't finalized the responsibilities of the council and the power of its chairman, or made progress on a number of other key Iraqiya policy platforms, including the release of Sunni leaders arrested on vague accusations of terrorism and support for the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"The Iraqiya bloc is looking forward to its partners in the political process meeting [their] commitments within one month. Iraqiya is hoping it won't be forced to review the decision of participation [in the power-sharing agreement] if [other parties] contradict the commitments," said Haider al-Mullah, a leading Iraqiya member.

By Thursday afternoon, Allawi filed into Iraq 's ornate parliamentary hall with the large group of politicians who had arrived to vote for the speaker position, a candidate also from Iraqiya.

The session, scheduled to start in the early evening Thursday, was also expected to elect the country's president, which according to the power-sharing agreement would remain Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani.

It wasn't immediately clear when parliament would discuss and approve the legal mechanism to create the new security council and its responsibilities, or the names of the country's new ministers Some Iraqi analysts don't see a full government emerging until after the new year, although the parliamentary vote today allows Maliki to comfortably continue in a caretaker role.

Thorny issues that still need to be determined as the ministerial positions get divided up include what role anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his political allies will play in the new government.

Also at stake is the role of the Kurds, and their demands. The demands include the resolution of a long-standing oil and gas revenue sharing dispute between their semiautonomous region and the central government and the implementation of a highly controversial constitutional article mandating a referendum on the status of the hotly contested northern oil-hub city of Kirkuk .

The Kurdish Alliance, which received the fourth-largest vote totals in the March election, opposes many Iraqiya members' views on local governance issues in the key oil-producing regions in the north.

Ahead of the parliamentary session Thursday, the Kurds were jubilant about the deal they had struck so far to retain the country's presidency.

"Each one of us got some of his rights and what he deserves," said Masoud Barzani, the president of the northern Kurdish region and one of the key figures who have helped mediate between Messrs. Maliki and Allawi since the election.

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