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Iraqi premier, Kurd leader strike deal
2.1.2006 |
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Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the
Iraqi interim prime minister, has held a long
closed-door meeting with Massoud Barzani, president
of the Iraqi Kurdistan province, in Salah al-Din
resort in Kurdistan (northern Iraq).
The Sunday meeting started in the morning and
carried on until the evening, with the two
politicians holding a news conference afterwards in
which they announced they had agreed to form a
broad-based national unity government.
The visit of al-Jaafari, who leads the Shia al-Dawa
party, to predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq came
after the visit of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of
the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the dominant Shia party
in Iraq.
Kurdish parties had shown dissatisfaction with al-Jaafari's
performance and accused him of neglecting his
partners in the political process. Sunday's visit
was the first by the prime minister since he was
elected in mid-2004.
The race to meet and discuss the political situation
in Iraq after December's parliamentary elections
included the Iraqi Sunni Arab political parties.
Sunni Arabs
A delegation from the main Sunni coalition, the Arab
National Accordance Front, also met senior Kurdish
officials on Sunday, possibly holding preliminary
discussions about the formation of a coalition
government ahead of final election results due to be
released this week. |
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari walks with
Kurdistan Reg. President Massoud Barzani (R) during
a meeting at a resort in Arbil, January 1, 2006.
Leaders of the Shi'ite and Kurdish blocs that
emerged triumphant in this month's Iraqi election
agreed to push ahead with efforts to bring Sunni and
other parties into a grand coalition government.
Photo: Reuters |
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It was the first trip by a Sunni Arab delegation to
Iraq's Kurdish region after the 15 December
parliamentary elections, whose results have been
contested by the sectarian minority and secular
parties.
The 10-member delegation was led by two of the
front's three leaders: Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of
the General Conference of the Iraqi People, and
Tariq al-Hashimi, head of the Iraqi Islamic party.
A representative of the secular party led by Iyad
Allawi, a Shia and the former prime minister, said
the group had not been invited to the Kurdish north,
which in recent days has seen a flurry of
post-election bargaining between the Kurds and the
governing Shia United Iraqi Alliance, which has a
strong election lead.
Dhafir al-Ani, spokesman for the Accordance Front,
told Aljazeera.net the visit had objectives
different from those of the visits by al-Jaafari and
al-Hakim.
"Mr al-Jaafari and Mr al-Hakim may have talked about
the formation of the new government in light of the
results of last December's elections, but we have a
different point of view," he said.
"We sought the meeting with Mr Barzani to try to
find an exit to solve the differences triggered by
the election results," he told Aljazeera.net.
Sunni Arab and secular Shia groups have complained
that widespread fraud and intimidation tainted the
elections and have demanded a rerun of the poll in
some provinces including Baghdad, the country's
largest with 59 of parliament's 275 seats.
They have also welcomed an international electoral
monitoring team that is to arrive in Baghdad on
Monday to assess the election process, a key
opposition demand.
Aljazeera + Agencies
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