Ammar Al-Hakim, Head of the Iraqi Supreme Coun­cil vis­ited Syria pres­i­dent Bashar Al-Assad to offer his con­do­lences with the death of Bashar’s brother, but in real­ity it is one of Al-Hakim’s con­tin­u­ous attempts to dis­tance him­self from Maliki’s accu­sa­tions against Syria.

After the meet­ing, Al-Hakim stressed on show­ing appre­ci­a­tion for Syria efforts to pre­serve Iraq’s unity, secu­rity and stability.

I will not be sur­prised if Hakim will try or already tried to con­tact the Ba’athists in Syria. Baath Party lead­ers in Dam­as­cus told Saudi news­pa­per Al-Watan that Maliki appointed a tribal chief to medi­ate with the them but they rejected any rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Maliki.

- For the first time, the Polit­i­cal Coun­cil for National Secu­rity crit­i­cized Maliki for his fail­ure in main­tain­ing the secu­rity. Sources inside the meet­ing told UAE news­pa­per Al-Ithad that the Polit­i­cal Coun­cil for National Secu­rity, unan­i­mously rejected an attempt to issue a sup­port state­ment for Maliki’s gov­ern­ment made by Pres­i­dent Jalal Talabani.

- Despite Bolani’s denial of the Iran­ian troops seize of oil­field, Iraqi national secu­rity coun­cil held an urgent meet­ing to dis­cuss this new development.

- After Hashemi’s call for the res­ig­na­tion of Maliki’s gov­ern­ment. Maliki crit­i­cized Tariq Al-hashemi today say­ing that he was an unsuc­cess­ful army offi­cer, expelled from the for­mer Iraqi army for “unknown reasons”.

Maliki added: “secu­rity in Iraq is a com­pli­cated issue, many peo­ple don’t and can’t under­stand it”ز

I think there is more behind Maliki esca­la­tion of the argu­ment with Hashemi:

For some unknown rea­son, Amer­i­can Vice Pres­i­dent Biden called Hashemi invited [17-12-2009] him to visit the U.S., which is the sec­ond invi­ta­tion within three weeks (Biden called Hashemi to dis­cuss the elec­tion law invit­ing him to visit the U.S. — 30-11-2009).

That explains Maliki’s para­noia, of any con­tacts with the U.S. before this cru­cial elec­tion time.