The “Round-Table” results

It became clear that each bloc has its own under­stand­ing of the mean­ing of the “Round Table”. Al-Iraqiya sees this table as an oppor­tu­nity to form “all coali­tions” partnership-government con­tains all coali­tions, includ­ing the “State of Law”, but with­out the Al-Maliki.

The National Alliance’s under­stand­ing of the “Round-Table” term depends on the polit­i­cal blocs within this coali­tion, Maliki for exam­ple sees the for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment must move for­ward, even with­out Iraqiya List. The Kur­dis­tan Alliance tends to form the Gov­ern­ment with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all other coali­tions. The Kurds don’t want to mar­gin­al­ize Al-Iraqiya because of the dis­puted areas in Kirkuk and Mosul.

With all these dif­fer­ences, leaked infor­ma­tion from Irbil’s meet­ings con­firmed the birth of semi-agreement accord­ing to this equation:

The Pres­i­dency of the par­lia­ment to be given to a Sunni bloc in Al-Iraqiya List, Iyad Allawi to lead a high offi­cial office, and the Prime Min­is­ter is Maliki’s share.

Allawi accepted this “cus­tom” equa­tion, telling other coali­tions lead­ers that he agreed on Al-Maliki as Prime Min­is­ter, after pres­sure from Saleh Al-Mutlaq, Osama Al-Najafi, Rafie Al-Issawi, and Tarek al-Hashemi who are ready to accept Maliki as Prime Minister.

Al-Iraqiya nego­tia­tors put four conditions:

- Two or three meet­ings to be held between Al-Iraqiya List and National Alliance (NA) in private.

- A joint com­mit­tee to recon­sider all the laws intro­duced by al-Malik after the election.

- Allawi for the pres­i­dency of the state, with more author­i­ties than the Primes Min­is­ter (Maliki in this case).

- Al-Iraqiya to name its can­di­dates for the min­istries with­out objec­tion of the NA, in return for NA to name its min­is­ters with­out objec­tion from Al-Iraqiya.

All the four demands (con­di­tions) are rejected by the National Alliance for these reasons:

- There is a com­mon Shi­ite agree­ment no to limit the Prime Minister’s authority.

- The only autho­rized offi­cial office allowed to check the laws intro­duced by Maliki after the elec­tion is the Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil, and the Shi­ite will not agree to re-activate this Council.

- There is no need to hold secret meet­ings. There can be pri­vate nego­ti­a­tions through mediators.

- All the Shi­ite coali­tions agree, that no Al-Iraqiya mem­bers allowed to hold any secu­rity posts.

Despite the rejec­tion of Al-Iraqiya demands, “Allawi-friendly” Arab coun­tries, Jor­dan and Egypt (even the Amer­i­can Embassy in Bagh­dad) expressed their sup­port to the results of Irbil meet­ing, and the agree­ment sounds the per­fect sce­nario to end the cri­sis, but what went wrong? … to be continued