Leading Shia politicians said on Tuesday 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 on Tuesday 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.
Maliki said he was confident a deal could be signed, perhaps even on Wednesday, 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 on Tuesday.
But the most important, and difficult, task of the assembly will be to draft a permanent Constitution by mid-August.
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. – Guardian Unlimited Â