Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Allawi and Nouri

March 2010, Iraq held elections. It should have been easy enough. But the UN refused to appoint a caretaker government and Nouri al-Maliki used his position as prime minister to delay and thwart. Nouri's political slate was State Of Law. It came in second. (Some rush to say, it was close! Elections are supposed to have winners and "I almost won it!" is meaningless after an election.) Iraqiya came in first. Even after Nouri demanded recounts. Ayad Allawi heads Iraqiya. Nouri, as prime minister, used his control of the Supreme Court to get the verdicts he needed and, with backing from the US, managed to hold on as prime minister. And since hanging on, he's done nothing for the Iraqi people and he still can't form a complete Cabinet all this time later. The security ministries are leaderless. Alsumaria TV reports:

Iraqiya Party leader Iyad Allawi argued on Monday that Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s government is working secretly as it passed the nominations of security ministers to Parliament.
Allawi affirmed that his list will not withdraw from the political process if Al Maliki insists on his candidates. “Al Maliki should be keen on national partnership since the political process is not owned by Al Maliki. It belongs to the Iraqi people”, Allawi said.
“It has been agreed that Al Iraqiya List will nominate the Defense Minister that should be approved by all political parties while the national alliance would nominate the Interior Minister and state minister for national security affairs”, Allawi explained.

But, as usual, Nouri makes pledges and promises to get what he wants and then, when he gets what he wants, betrays the agreement. New Sabah publishes a letter Allawi wrote to Nouri. In it, he replies to Nouri's May 6th letter. He also reminds that Iraqiy won the largest number of votes in the elections ("despite the hostile disinformation campaign," Allawi notes without stating Nouri was responsible for that campaign). He refers to the Erbil Agreement which ended the political stalemate after over 9 months of gridlock and reminds that the Erbil Agreement was supposed to be implemented (the Kurds and Americans brokered the agreement). That agreement, apparently had a passage regarding the MEK (Iranian dissidents in Iraq prior to the start of the Iraq War, currently living at Camp Ashraf) and, by Allawi's statements, there was an agreement that the residents would be protected. Allawi notes that he would be the first to call out any political interference by the MEK but that this hasn't taken place. (Nouri and his supporters have been attempting to force them Camp Ashraf residents out of Iraq.) The paper summarizes Nouri's letter Allawi's replying to -- summarizes at length. I'm sure they're accurate but I'm not comfortable commenting on it or including what are supposed to be Allawi's reply to certain issues between himself and Nouri -- not comfortable without the full letter from Nouri being published. Al Sabaah reports that Allawi and KRG President Massoud Barzani are working together on ensuring the Erbil Agreement is honored. Dar Addustour reports on the conflict between Allawi and Nouri and mainly emphasizes Allawi's calling Nouri out for asserting that the decision to extend the presence of US forces on Iraqi soil past 2011 is his (Nouri's) decision and only his.

In possibly related news, Dar Addustour reports that Russia's Secretary of State Sergei Lavrov is meeting with Iraqi officials (including Minster of Foreign Affairs Hoshyar Zebari, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Nouri) and has stated that Russia is ready to help Iraq in all areas, including military support.

In other news Al Rafidayn reports at least one "diplomat" at Iraq's Embassy in Yemen has been arrested by Yemen authorities and charged with selling passports to known terrorists.


We'll close with this from Juan Gonzalez' "President Obama weakly punts immigration reform back to Congress" (New York Daily News):


President Obama said all the right things in El Paso on Tuesday about the need to fix the country's immigration system, while lauding the progress he'd made in controlling the border.

But when the soaring rhetoric was done, Obama closed with a weak punt of immigration reform back to Congress.

Yes We Can turned into No I Can't.

He refused to do what many Latino leaders have urged for months. He rejected using executive powers to soften the worst aspects of the government's crackdown on the nation's 11 million undocumented residents.

He turned his back on 1 million young people known as the DREAMERS. They are the high school and college kids brought to this country illegally by their parents.




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