BAGHDAD, 19 March 2005 — Iraqi groups wooed outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Sunnis to join a coalition yesterday as they predicted that Iraq’s next government could be formed within a week.
A US soldier was shot dead while on patrol in Baghdad, and a Christian politician with dual Iraqi and Swedish citizenship held hostage since Jan. 28 was released by his captors, said Sweden’s chief prosecutor.
Six weeks after the release of results from the landmark Jan. 30 elections, Iraq still had no new government, but talk of a breakthrough was afoot.
“We have set next Thursday (March 24) as a preliminary date for the National Assembly to reconvene,” Jawad Al-Maliky, a member of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), told reporters.
“We have agreed on the principles of the government, but we do not have yet a final deal on the make-up of the government. We hope that will happen before the assembly meets.”
Fawzi Hariri, an aide to foreign minister and Kurdish negotiator Hoshyar Zebari, suggested: “Within a week to 10 days the whole thing should be done.”
The new Parliament held its first session Wednesday.
Zebari told AFP the Kurdistan Alliance, with 77 seats in the 275-member Parliament, had finally agreed on the terms of forming a coalition government with the UIA, the biggest victor with 146 seats.
“All the principles have been agreed upon by all the parties.”
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 contributed to the failure Wednesday of MPs to choose an executive body or to schedule a second session.
The sides have drafted a written agreement, which is meant to assure the Kurds that their virtual autonomy in the north after years of suffering under former 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, from which Saddam expelled tens of thousands of Kurds.
“The issue of Kirkuk has been addressed satisfactorily based on procedures and measures mapped out in the transitional law,” Zebari said.
Zebari said the new government is committed to resettling displaced Kurds in the city and arbitrating property disputes between the Kurds and the Arabs who were brought into Kirkuk to replace them.
But the sides will ink the written agreement, formalizing their alliance, only after wooing other parties to sign as well, Zebari’s aide Hariri said.
The Kurds and Shiites have started courting the secular ex-Baathist Iyad Allawi and leading politicians like outgoing Sunni President Sheikh Ghazi Al-Yawar.
The UIA and Kurdistan Alliance met Allawi’s Iraqi list on Thursday and presented it with the agreement.
“We asked the Iraqi list to give us their vision and idea on whether they will participate in the new government or not. They have given us a positive response,” Zebari said, adding that their participation now hinged on Cabinet posts offered to them.
A senior member of Allawi’s list, Imad Shibib, confirmed the talks were progressing. “Until now, we are in negotiations with both lists. We have not come to a decision,” he told reporters.
Talks yesterday between the UIA and Kurds were concentrating on awarding government posts among the volatile mix of ethnic and religious groups.
“We’re now reaching out to the other lists. This is why it is taking so long,” Zebari said.
One stumbling block is finding ministerial posts for the Sunnis, who had been the ruling elite for most of Iraq’s modern history. The embittered minority is seen as fueling the insurgency and widely boycotted the elections.
“It’s neither in our interest or yours that you do not take part in the political process, because your absence will perpetuate the occupation and terror and will bring down the house on everyone,” UIA-allied cleric Sadreddin Al-Kubanji said in his weekly sermon in Najaf.
Meanwhile, the group of Iraq’s Al-Qaeda frontman, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Thursday that killed two people and wounded 15, including six US soldiers, in Mosul.
“A car bomb driven by a candidate for martyrdom exploded against an armored vehicle that it totally destroyed and destroyed a second one,” read the statement from the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers posted on a website. The authenticity of the claim could not be verified.
In fresh violence, a US soldier was shot dead when his patrol in northeast Baghdad was attacked, the US military said, while an Iraqi soldier was kidnapped in Tuz, police said. Also in Baghdad, a policeman was killed while washing his car near his home in the southern Doura district.
— With input from agencies
