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Prague, 23 March 2005 (RFE/RL) – Iraqi
politicians say a new government could be named
within a few days.
National Security Adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubay'i is a
member of the mostly Shi’a United Iraqi Alliance. He
told RFE/RL’s Iraqi Service yesterday that
candidates for most top positions have been agreed
upon.
"We agreed on almost [everything], including the
prime minister. We agreed on most of the ministries
and their details," he said. "What is left are some
simple problems that have some kind of importance
and we are still discussing them. We think, today or
tomorrow or after tomorrow, we will solve these
problems. We hope the National Assembly will meet
again or will continue its first session either on
Thursday or Friday [24 or 25 March] at the latest."
The Shi’a and Kurdish blocs hope to present a
“package deal” to the National Assembly, which must
ratify the new government. The two blocs jointly
control more than two-thirds of the seats in the
National Assembly, enough to assure passage for any
deal they strike.
The progress toward a new government has not been
easy. The negotiations are now in their eighth week
since Iraqis went to the polls on 30 January to
elect the National Assembly, and imminent deals have
been announced before.
Still, many analysts say that, this time, a
government looks within reach. They say the
government will most likely feature Kurdish leader
Jalal Talabani as president and United Iraqi
Alliance candidate Ibrahim al-Ja'fari, the head of a
Shi’a religious party, as prime minister.
Kamran al-Karadaghi is an Iraq expert at the
Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London who
recently visited Kurdish-administered northern Iraq.
Al-Karadaghi says the Kurdish and Shi’a blocs had
little difficultly agreeing on the candidates for
the top spots. But they had serious problems
agreeing on a common vision for Iraq’s future.
He says the Kurds demanded Iraq be a federation in
which the Kurdish-administered areas maintain at
least the degree of autonomy they now enjoy. They
have been particularly keen to keep control of their
own armed forces, the “peshmerga.”
“They insist that their armed forces, the peshmerga,
should be part of the Iraqi army, but at the same
time they will be accountable to the Kurdish
authorities," he says. "And even the Iraqi army will
have no right to enter the Kurdistan federal region
without the approval of the Kurdistan parliament.”
The Shi’a bloc had sought to absorb the peshmerga
into Iraq’s centrally controlled security services.
But the United Iraqi Alliance now appears to have
accepted the Kurds’ demand. The details are due to
be worked out during the writing of Iraq's
constitution later this year.
The Kurds also have sought support for their desire
to bring the disputed multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk
into the Kurdish-administered region. The resolution
of that issue remains unclear, but many analysts
expect it to now be put off until the writing of the
constitution.
The United Iraqi Alliance, which includes powerful
religious parties, is reported to have sought a
prominent role for Islamic values in Iraq's new
order.
The religious parties’ demands in the past have
included making Islamic law, or Sharia, the sole
source for Iraq’s legal code. But those demands have
run into strong opposition from secular Kurdish and
other politicians.
Al-Karadaghi says all sides now appear to have
agreed that Islam will be one of several sources for
Iraq’s laws.
“I think when the agreement is announced it will
make crystal clear that Islam will not be the [sole]
source of law in Iraq and that all religions will be
respected in Iraq and there will be no law which
will violate any religion in Iraq," he says. "This
is what the Kurds were insisting upon.”
Iraqi law has drawn on both secular and Islamic
principles since modern Iraq’s independence in 1932.
As the Shi’a and Kurds have sought a “package deal,”
they have also had to wrestle with how to
accommodate Iraq’s once-dominant Sunni minority.
The Sunnis are under-represented in the National
Assembly after most Sunni voters heeded community
leaders’ calls to boycott the 30 January election,
or stayed home for security reasons.
News reports say the two blocs have agreed that a
Sunni should hold the influential post of speaker of
the parliament -- despite the fact that the biggest
Sunni party in the assembly has just five seats. The
likely candidate is current interim President Ghazi
Ajil al-Yawir.
The Shi’a and Kurdish blocs are also reported to
have agreed that one of Iraq’s two vice president
positions will go to a Sunni. Leading candidates are
Adnan Pachachi, who served as prime minister in the
1950s, and Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a member of
Iraq’s deposed Hashemite dynasty.
The other vice presidency is expected to go to
current interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose
party holds the third-largest bloc of seats in the
assembly. Allawi is a secular Shi’a politician with
close ties to Washington.
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