BAGHDAD, March 11: Sunni and Shia political leaders held talks on Saturday on breaking a deadlock over a new prime minister that has stalled the formation of a government of national unity.
It was the first two-way meeting between Sunni and Shia parties since the bombing of holy shrines of Imam Hassan Askari and Imam Ali Naqi on Feb 22 unleashed a wave of sectarian violence, much of it directed against Sunni mosques and clerics. The attacks had prompted Sunni parties to pull out of negotiations.
President Jalal Talabani on Friday delayed Sunday’s opening of parliament by a week to give parties more time to agree on key posts, including that of the powerful position of prime minister, now occupied by Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
The Shia Alliance, which dominated elections in December, has said it will not succumb to pressure from Kurds and Sunnis to drop Jaafari, who critics say has failed to bring stability or prosperity to Iraq in the year he has been interim premier.
“We are on our way to meet the UIA now to discuss the formation of the government and solve the political crisis,” said Zafer al-Aani, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni Arab political grouping.
The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a coalition of Shia Islamist parties, won 128 seats in the elections, making it the biggest bloc in parliament. But is still short of the required number of seats to form a government on its own.
“We will discuss the nomination of the Shia Alliance for prime minister,” Aani said.
An aide to Vice President Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a leading member of the Shia Alliance, said the meeting had started at 3.30 pm.
The Accordance Front had made a list of 10 conditions for it to return to the talks. Talabani said on Friday most of these had been met.
The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, is pressing the political leaders to end the impasse and move quickly to form a grand coalition of Shias, Kurds and Sunnis.
Washington hopes a national unity government will undermine support for the insurgency and allow US troop withdrawals.
Editor killed: Gunmen assassinated a senior editor for Iraqi state television along with his driver on Saturday as they headed to work in Baghdad, police and the channel said.
Iraqiya television and police sources said Amjad Hameed, a father of three, had just left his house in central Baghdad when a car blocked his way and gunmen shot him in the head. He was the second Iraqi journalist to be killed in a week.
Hameed’s assassination drew wide condemnation and renewed calls for journalists to be allowed to carry firearms to protect themselves.
Mu’ayad al-Lami of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate urged all sides to recognize the neutrality of journalists in Iraq.
“We strongly condemn this horrible crime... the syndicate will formally ask the Interior Minister to grant journalists a licence for carrying guns to protect themselves against any possible assault,” he said.
Iraqiya, whose editorial stance is close to the government, briefly cut its regular programming and aired verses from the holy Quran in a sign of mourning before showing footage of his body and of surgeons trying to revive his driver who underwent emergency surgery before he died of his wounds.
More than 70 foreign and Iraqi journalists have been reported killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Last July, Khalid al-Attar, an Al-Iraqiya television journalist, was killed after being abducted by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.
Munsuf Abdallah al-Khalidi, a presenter on the Baghdad Television channel run by Iraq’s largest Sunni political party, was shot dead on Tuesday.—Reuters
