Iraq's Prime Minister on Wednesday threatened to replace ministers belonging to a Sunni bloc in his coalition and demanded the return of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi
Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
The prime minister's conduct has led to concern that he is attempting to exclude the Sunnis out of power and risks reigniting the violence between the two communities that scarred the middle of the last decade.
US troops completed their withdrawal on Sunday, leaving behind what President Barack Obama described as "sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq".
But Mr Obama has already had to call upon Vice President Joe Biden to try and cool tempers in Baghdad.
Mr Biden telephoned Mr Maliki and Osama al-Nujaifi, the parliamentary speaker, on Tuesday and "stressed the urgent need for the prime minister and the leaders of the other major blocs to meet and work through their differences together," the White House said.
Mr Maliki has also asked that parliament fire another rival, his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlaq, after he compared Mr Maliki to Saddam Hussein.
There was some sign of an ameliorating effect on Mr Maliki, who invited the Sunni and Kurdish parties for talks, but he was promptly rebuffed by the Sunni party, Iraqiya.
It said that Mr Maliki represented "the main reason for the crisis and the problem, not a positive element for a solution".
Despite Mr Biden's counsel, Mr Maliki issued his threat to dismiss the nine ministers of Iraqiya on the very public stage of a press conference in Baghdad.
"Ministers have no right to suspend their membership in the government because they will be considered resigned. In the next cabinet meeting, if they do not come back, we will appoint replacements," he said.
Iraqiya, which has not pulled out of the government, holds 82 of the 325 seats in parliament and controls nine ministerial posts, and had earlier said it was suspending its participation in the legislature.
The bloc, which garnered most of its support from the Sunni minority and emerged with the most seats in March 2010 elections, was outmanoeuvred for the premiership by Mr Maliki who finished second in the polls.
The prime minister also demanded that the authorities in the Kurdish autonomous region return Mr Hashemi, who fled north on Sunday when he got wind of his arrest.
"We call for the government of the Kurdistan region to hand over Hashemi to the justice system," he said. "We do not accept any interference in Iraqi justice and I do not allow myself and others to bargain over Iraqi blood."
Mr Hashemi has denied charges that he paid his bodyguards to kill government officials during the heyday of Iraq's insurgency, and has described the case against him as a "fabricated" attempt to embarrass him and his political party.
The fact that the vice president is Sunni and the crimes he is accused of are old, have led to questions about whether the case is a politically motivated bid to by to keep the Sunni community out of power.
Many Sunnis feel the Shiite-led government is too close to neighbouring Iran and determined to keep Sunnis, who once dominated the country under Saddam Hussein, from ever regaining positions of power.
A cartoon in Al Sabaah newspaper captured the crisis: two American soldiers in helmets talk, their backs turned on three men fighting for a share of Iraq. "We left them in peace and harmony," one American soldier says to the other as they walk away.
No comments:
Post a Comment