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Leading
Shia politicians said yesterday that they had
finally brokered a deal with Kurdish parties to end
a debilitating impasse over the formation of Iraq's
first freely elected government in decades.
They said Iraq's new parliament, which held its
largely ceremonial inaugural session last week,
would reconvene on Saturday to try to form a
coalition administration.
"We have agreed on almost everything, and expect to
present an agreement on a government of national
unity to parliament by the end of the week," said
Jawad al-Maliki, a senior aide to Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
the prime minister in waiting.
But similar positive noises have been made over the
past fortnight and negotiators admitted yesterday
that the distribution of key cabinet posts,
including oil, defence and finance, had yet to be
decided.
The main Shia alliance, put together with the
blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, emerged
from the January 30 vote with 140 seats in the
275-member assembly, and the Kurds with 75. Both
have since been trying to form a coalition to muster
the two-thirds parliamentary support necessary to
elect a president and establish a government.
Mr Maliki said he was confident a deal could be
signed, perhaps even today, as soon as Kurdish
leaders returned from new year celebrations in the
north.
Sources said that Jalal Talabani, the veteran
Kurdish leader widely expected to become the new
Iraqi president, would then probably visit the Shia
holy city of Najaf to seek Ayatollah Sistani's
approval.
Talks have stumbled over the status of the disputed
northern city of Kirkuk, the future of Kurdish
peshmerga fighters, which the Shia want to be
absorbed into Iraq's centrally controlled security
structures, and the role of religion in the new
state. The Kurds want guarantees that Iraq will
remain secular. Such issues appear to have been
resolved - for now.
"We will affirm the need to solve territorial
disputes according to the interim constitution,
which also says Islam is a main source of
legislation and dispels fears that Iraq will be
ruled by the clergy," Ali al-Dabagh, a senior member
of the United Iraqi Alliance, told Reuters
yesterday.
But the most important, and difficult, task of the
assembly will be to draft a permanent constitution
by mid-August.
Mr Maliki said delays had also been caused by the
need to make the government as inclusive as
possible.
"It is extremely important to draw Sunni Arabs, many
of whom didn't vote and some of whom are in the
insurgency, into the government and into the
political process," he said.
The speaker of parliament is expected to be a Sunni
Arab, possibly the current interim president, Sheikh
Gazi al-Yawar. Kurds have also been trying to
persuade the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi,
whose list came third in the elections, to join the
new administration. His name has been linked with
the vice-presidency.
"The plan is to present a package deal to the
assembly," said Hoshyar Zebari, the interim foreign
minister and a member of the four-man Kurdish
negotiating team.
He said the package, which they were "close to
finalising", consisted of three parts, "the
programme of the transitional government, the rules
and mechanisms of how the coalition will work, and
the distribution of posts".
With the insurgency still raging across large parts
of the country, ordinary Iraqis have expressed
growing frustration at the failure of the two main
blocs to agree on a government of national unity
following the elections.
www.guardian.co.uk
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