Allawi-Maliki meeting postponed once again

Meme­brs of Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya List said yes­ter­day, that the List will announce a “sur­prise” news dur­ing the next two days, after Allawi-Maliki meet­ing (which is post­poned or unlikely will hap­pen). Until now, there is now announce­ment made by Al-Iraqiya, but the so called “sur­prise” is that Al-Iraqiya will announce itself as a polit­i­cal party and not coali­tion. Good for mem­ber of Al-Iraqiya con­fi­dence but not a major impact on the Iraqi pol­i­tics or the cur­rent crisis.

Dif­fi­cult to swal­low expla­na­tion given by Allawi’s sup­port­ers on the com­ing meet­ing between Allawi and Maliki:

The immi­nent agree­ment with Al-Maliki is to pre­vent the return of the quota sys­tem and out­side inter­fer­ence in the Iraqi affairs.

For Iyad Allawi, he wants, to throw the ball into the Maliki’s court after the meet­ing, espe­cially that Allawi, has close ties with the two most impor­tant coali­tions (the Iraqi National Coali­tion (INA) and the Sadrists), presents an accept­able level of part­ner­ship does not lead to the mar­gin­al­iza­tion or exclu­sion of oth­ers, espe­cially the Sadr move­ment. Allawi seeks to reas­sure the Sadrists by giv­ing them a com­fort­able share of the gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­larly ser­vice min­istries (explains Maliki’s insis­tence to hold the meet­ing in Talabani’s house, to embar­rass Allawi with his posi­tion from the Kurds).

While the sit­u­a­tion for Maliki is quite dif­fer­ent because of the Sadrists’ neg­a­tive atti­tude towards Maliki is still present, although they agreed to unite with his coali­tion (Al-Iraqiya mem­ber “Adnan Al-Danbous revealed that one of the rea­sons behind the delay of Maliki-Allawi meet­ing is Maliki’s insis­tence to exclude the Sadrists from any deal in the com­ing gov­ern­ment). But there is another major rea­son behind Maliki’s efforts to delay the meet­ing with Allawi, the fail­ure to resolve the board com­mit­tee of 14 mem­bers formed to choose the most appro­pri­ate can­di­date for prime min­is­ter from among five candidates.

Accept­ing to meet is in itself a new devel­op­ment, and if they pro­duced con­crete results, it would be a real turn in the equa­tions in the polit­i­cal sys­tem, which chal­lenges the eth­nic and reli­gious sit­u­a­tion in nearly seven years, and even will have its impli­ca­tions on the unsta­ble regional scene.

Tehran has estab­lished itself as the main fac­tor in the new polit­i­cal equa­tion facil­i­tates the Shi­ites alliance the appro­pri­ate pow­er­ful cards to nego­ti­ate with both with the Kur­dis­tan Alliance or with Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya, (let alone the small blocs).

Tehran added another new card in its nego­ti­a­tions (or con­flict) with Wash­ing­ton, forc­ing the lat­ter to rec­og­nize that its bet on other regional cap­i­tals (Saudi Ara­bia) is not guaranteed.

As the only key play­ers in the Iraqi arena, the con­clu­sion is that the suc­cess of Maliki-Allawi meet­ing can­not be occur with­out the two cap­i­tals (Wash­ing­ton and Tehran) approvals.

The suc­cess for such a deal?

More­over, the regional cap­i­tals (assum­ing that there is an Iranian-American con­sen­sus) would feel that they lost an impor­tant polit­i­cal card, and will try to inter­fere with such an alliance.