ANKARA/AMMAN, 25 August 2007 — Iraq’s vice president said yesterday his Sunni political party will not return to its Cabinet positions unless its demands are met. Tariq Al-Hashemi’s moderate party is part of a Sunni political alliance, the Concord Front, which recently pulled five of its ministers out of the Shiite-dominated government, saying Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki failed to respond to a set of demands, including the release of security detainees held without charges.
“We don’t have such a thought, such a willingness,” Hashemi said in response to a question about whether the ministers would return to their Cabinet jobs. “We have suggested a package of reforms which includes our expectations; we may return to the Cabinet if the government meets our expectations.”
Hashemi’s Iraqi Islamic Party is the moderate third of the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament and was working to improve conditions for the detainees and to free the innocent among them. The Concord Front, which also includes the hard-line Cong pulled out of government citing Maliki’s failure to respond to demands that also included the disbanding of militias and the participation of all groups represented in government in dealing with security issues.
More broadly, the Sunnis complained that decisions were being taken by a small group around Maliki and the Sunnis had no real input in government policy. The Sunni pullout disrupted Maliki’s “unity” government and left it without a real Sunni voice. Although it has a majority in Parliament, any laws passed may not receive wide acceptance.
Hashemi made his statement during a joint news conference in Ankara with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. Gul urged the divided government to overcome its differences, cautioning that a “division of Iraq is not an alternative.”
Meanwhile, US soldiers battled Shiite fighters in Baghdad yesterday, killing 13 people, a day after a fierce clash between Al-Qaeda militants and a rival group left dozens dead. US attack helicopters fired on Shiite militants in Baghdad’s northwestern Shuala neighborhood in the pre-dawn firefight, killing 13 people, including two women, a medic and security officials told reporters.
Former Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Aref died yesterday aged 91 at Jordan’s King Hussein Medical Center, according to his son, Qais, in Amman. He said that his father was admitted to hospital three weeks ago “because of fatigue” and that he did not suffer from any specific illness. Qais said that the former Iraqi president would be buried in Jordan, and not in Iraq “due to the dangerous security situation” there.
Aref became president between April 1966 and July 1968, succeeding his brother Abdul Salam Aref, who was killed in a dubious helicopter crash. Aref was forced to step down in July 1968 in a coup that was led by Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr, who became president and appointed his nephew, Saddam Hussein, as vice president.
