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| Iraq |
| Iraq main parties break off coalition talks |
| 2010-08-17 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] The two men vying to lead Iraq broke off talks on Monday aimed at forming a government after an unseemly quarrel over their blocs' sectarian roots, five months after general elections. In yet another disappointing development for the war-torn nation's citizens, suffering persistent power cuts and a lack of reconstruction, election winner Iyad Allawi demanded an apology from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A spokeswoman for Iraqiya, Maysoon al-Damluji, said the bloc stopped negotiations with Maliki's State of Law after he described Allawi's group as Sunni, rather than cross-sectarian in a television interview to be broadcast on Monday. "We demand that he apologizes, not to Iraqiya but to the supporters of Iraqiya who voted for a national project and not a sectarian one," Damluji said. Intisar Allawi, a senior Iraqiya official, said more than 26 of its 91 elected lawmakers were Shiite, as was Iyad Allawi himself. "So why does he call us a Sunni bloc? This is an insult," she said. However, Allawi's party left the door open for a return to talks. "We have asked him to apologize. Without an apology, we are not going to negotiate with him anymore," she said. While Allawi is a Shiite, like Maliki and the majority of Iraq's population, his bloc claimed most of its electoral support from the predominantly Sunni regions of western and northern Iraq. While neither won the majority in the March 7 election needed to govern, Maliki's State of Law won two seats fewer than Iraqiya in the 325-seat parliament. Iraqiya won broad backing from Sunnis who saw Allawi as a secular strongman willing to defend their cause and to stand up against Shiite power Iran. |
| Posted by:Fred |