Allawi and Maliki reached an agreement, Saudi Arabia asked Allawi to accept any deal

Syria asked Iran’s pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad to ban Maliki’s sec­ond term as a Prime Min­ster, explain­ing that this is the wish of four coun­tries (Syria, Saudi Ara­bia, Egypt and Turkey).

This story will be widely spread tomor­row or in the com­ing days. After con­sul­ta­tion among the three major coali­tions (Iraqiya, INA, and SoL) sources close to Iyad Allawi revealed that all the three coali­tions accepted to appoint Allawi as the next Prime Min­is­ter and Maliki given the choice to be vice-president or any other post selected by Maliki himself.

Also revealed that the Saudi gov­ern­ment, advised by Iyad Allawi, and the other lead­ers in Al-Iraqiya List, to par­tic­i­pate in the gov­ern­ment, in what­ever way pos­si­ble, and even to accept half-solutions, warn­ing of two things:

- The need not to alien­ate the regional sup­port for Al-Iraqiya List, even if Allawi chooses to form a coali­tion with one of the two Shi­ite coalitions,or even to sac­ri­fice Kirkuk to the Kurds (which explains why Osama Al-Nujaifi and Salih Al-Mutlaq crit­i­cized Allawi’s nego­ti­a­tions with the Kurds, say­ing that he (Allawi) doesn’t rep­re­sent Al-Iraqiya in these nego­ti­a­tions).

The Saudis also advised Allawi to keep a “safe” dis­tance from Iran. Any close rela­tions with Iran will lead to the dis­in­te­gra­tion of his Sunni major­ity Coalition.

- Saudi Ara­bia will accept the cur­rent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Iraq and ready to nor­mal­ize the rela­tions with Bagh­dad after the for­ma­tion of the new gov­ern­ment. Saudi Ara­bia feels that it will be alone fac­ing Iran and Iran-controlled Iraq after the with­drawal of the U.S. mil­i­tary forces.

On the other hand, it seems that there are Saudi fears expressed by some Saudi writ­ers of the pos­si­bil­ity of spread­ing the “Iraqi democ­racy” in the regional coun­tries. This expressed by Saudi writer Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashid in his arti­cle “Is Iraq’s Democ­racy Con­ta­gious?”, in which he argued that all democ­racy expe­ri­ences in Arab coun­tries failed, and this is also will be the fate of the Iraqi democracy.