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BAGHDAD, March 18 (AFP) - 11h45 - Iraq's Kurdish
political bloc said on Friday it had settled its
differences with the election-winning Shiite list
and the sides were now wooing outgoing prime
minister Iyad Allawi and the country's Sunni
minority.
Almost seven weeks after Iraq's elections, the
Kurdistan Alliance, with 77 seats in the new
275-member parliament, has agreed to the terms of a
coalition government with the powerful Shiite United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the biggest victor with 146
parliament seats.
"It's been finalised in the last few days," said
Fawzi Hariri, an aide to Kurdish negotiator Hoshyar
al-Zebari, the current foreign minister.
Zebari's faction of the Kurdish list, the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), had pressed last-minute
demands on the Shiites over the status of the
northern, ethnically-divided, oil city of Kirkuk and
their peshmerga militia.
The deadlock between the Kurds and the Shiite
alliance contributed to the new parliament's failure
on Wednesday in its opening session to choose an
executive body or to schedule a second session.
The written deal is meant to assure the Kurds that
their virtual autonomy in the north after years of
suffering under jailed dictator Saddam Hussein will
be protected.
It also commits the next government to taking
concrete steps under Iraq's interim constitution to
solving the problem of Kirkuk, where tens of
thousands of Kurds were expelled by Saddam.
In what they see as a matter of justice, Kurds wants
Kirkuk and its surrounding province, with its
lucrative oil reserves, annexed to Kurdistan.
The sides will sign a written agreement, formalising
their alliance, but are now trying to woo other
parties to sign as well, Hariri said.
They have started courting the secular ex-Baathist
Iyad Allawi and leading politicians like outgoing
president Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar from Iraq' Sunni
minority, Hariri said.
The UIA and Kurdistan Alliance met Allawi on
Thursday and presented him with the agreement
between the sides.
"The talks went very well ... Allawi's team had a
number of points they wanted clarified and they were
answered," Hariri said.
"We'd like them to join us in a unity government ...
We're quietly confident. We're hopeful."
Hariri said talks on Friday were concentrating on
awarding government posts among the country's
volatile mix of ethnic and religious groups.
The UIA's candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim
Jaafari, predicted on Wednesday that a government
would be formed within two weeks.
And Hariri suggested: "Within a week to 10 days the
whole thing should be done."
Aware of the critics, who have described the
plodding negotiations as a bad sign, Hariri said:
"We've never been through this experience before."
One stumbling-block is finding ministerial posts for
the Sunni Arabs, who had been the ruling elite for
most of Iraq's modern history until the fall of
Saddam two years ago.
The embittered minority is seen as fuelling the
insurgency and widely boycotted the elections.
But details on the shape of the government were
emerging.
Iraq's presidency will likely go to Kurdish chief
Jalal al-Talabani and the two deputies will probably
be a Shiite and a Sunni Muslim Arab.
In fresh violence north of the capital, a soldier
was kidnapped in Tuz, police said, while a bomb
wounded three people near the refinery town of Baiji.
The body of a businessman working with the Americans
was found on Friday near Dujail, north of Baghdad,
police said. The man had been shot.
To the south, near Nassiriyah, attackers on Thursday
shot dead a truck driver who was carrying
merchandise for the ministry of trade, police said.
On an Internet website, the Al-Qaeda linked Army of
Ansar al-Sunna claimed it had killed a Christian
general in the Iraqi police force earlier this week
in Kirkuk.
In other developments, the US army expects to reduce
its forces in Iraq later this year and early next
because of what General Richard Cody, army vice
chief of staff, said on Thursday were gains from
successful elections and a campaign against
insurgents.
AFP
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