Iraq parties strike deal to share power

IRAQ’S PARLIAMENT has met to confirm a powersharing deal that would grant a second term to prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and launch the process of forming a government, more than eight months after the country’s legislative election.

The meeting yesterday was postponed three times during the day as fractious politicians bickered over powers and posts.

Mr Maliki is expected to have a hard time forming his cabinet over the next 45 days.

Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani will be reappointed to the largely ceremonial position of president, while Mr Maliki’s bitter rival, Ayad Allawi, is slated to chair a newly created national security council.

Mr Allawi’s nominee, Usamah al-Nujaifi, a hawkish Sunni, was elected parliamentary speaker.

Mr Allawi’s secular Iraqiya bloc won the largest number of seats in the assembly, but he was unable to form a majority coalition. This left Mr Maliki, whose sectarian Shia State of Law bloc came second, to cobble together an unstable coalition of convenience consisting of the faction loyal to anti-US Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the Kurds and a reluctant Iraqiya.

The deal, reached late on Wednesday, did not give Mr Allawi and his secular and Sunni constituents a full partnership in the government, and could prompt Sunni dissidents to return to armed struggle against a regime they consider still dominated by religious Shias and separatist Kurds.

“I don’t think we got what we wanted. We are the biggest bloc, and we won the election,” Jaber al-Jaberi, an Iraqi legislator from the restive Sunni city of Ramadi, said.

“We earned the right to form the government . . . there were powerful forces . . . and we compromised.”

Unfortunately for Mr Allawi, who intended to hold out until he got a better deal, at least 30 key members of his own bloc broke ranks and pledged to back Mr Maliki.

Iraqiya did, however, receive some concessions, including a pledge to revoke legislation excluding former members of the ousted Baath party from political office, the administration and the security forces. It remains to be seen whether Mr Maliki will deliver on this promise.

Tehran broke the political deadlock by convincing the Sadrists and the Kurds to back Mr Maliki.

This sidelined Washington and its Arab allies, which had wanted Mr Maliki and Mr Allawi to join in a national unity government which would have created a balance between the sectarian and secular camps and marginalised Iran’s influence.

However, US political clout in Iraq has waned since Washington began withdrawing its troops with the aim of ending deployment in Iraq by the end of next year.

The deal perpetuates the ethno-sectarian system of governance the Bush administration imposed on Iraq in 2003 after the fall of the Baathist regime.

This system handed power to religious Shia and separatist Kurdish parties. By voting in large numbers for Iraqiya, secular and Sunni Iraqis had hoped to oust this system and restore Iraqi unity.

Three thousand Iraqis have been slain since the March 7th election, which many thought would end conflict in the country.