.Legislators in Iraq Block a Deal on Election Law
BAGHDAD — The country’s political parties failed to agree on election laws on Tuesday, despite a proposed deal put together by the nation’s top political figures the day before. The stalemate marked another blockage in negotiations that have dragged on for weeks, threatening national elections scheduled for January 16th.
The official deadline for passing an election law was October 15th. Elections can still be held on time if the parties agree on terms this week, but not much later, said Said Arikat, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, which proposed guidelines to break the logjam among the parties.
“This is really crunch time,” Mr. Arikat said. “We have everything in place to conduct an election on time. With every passing day, it becomes more difficult.” Any postponement in the elections carries the potential for slowing the withdrawal of American troops.
Legislators said they would continue to meet but that they were far from agreement. “Yes, we’re closer than a week ago,” said Osama Nujaifi, a parliament member from the Iraqiya bloc, who said he was confident that the elections would go forward as scheduled on Jan. 16.
Iraq’s top political leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki and President Jalal Talibani and their deputies, moved quickly Monday night to agree on a compromise in the wake of coordinated suicide bombings on government buildings that appeared intended to stall negotiations.
Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, of the Shiite Dawa party, said the recent bombings had added urgency to the election discussions, encouraging the parties to cooperate. “It makes us see the enemy and all want to join together,” he said.
Party members said there was broad general agreement on allowing people to vote for individual candidates, rather than lists. But the parties remained divided on laws governing elections in Kirkuk, an oil-rich province to the north of Baghdad that has long been a point of contention between Kurds and Arabs.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator, said he was critical of the leaders’ proposed solution on Kirkuk, which would combine voting registration records from 2004 and 2009 to reflect the province changing population, which grew more Kurdish in those years. But he welcomed a United Nations proposal of using only 2009 records in the current election, then revisiting the question for future elections.
“It’s a great injustice to use the 2004 records,” Mr. Othman said, because many Kurds were driven from Kirkuk in ethnic cleansing campaigns under Saddam Hussein. He added, “If we don’t reach a solution this week, the election will be delayed, and we will have a constitutional vacuum after January 16th.”
The negotiations Tuesday took place against the backdrop of an announcement by the
Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of terrorist organizations that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a mostly homegrown group that American intelligence says has some foreign leadership. The group claimed credit for two recent bombing attacks and called the attack of October 25th — in which at least 155 people were killed and several government buildings destroyed — “the second stage of the good harvest plan.”
On Monday the Iraqi military arrested eight members of a terrorist cell it said was involved in the bombings as well as a similar attack on the foreign ministry in August.
As the party members debated election law, Baghdad’s governor, Salah Abdul Razzaq, called for the firing of the Minister of Interior and the operations commander over the recent bombings, which he blamed on negligence.
Also on Tuesday, in the northern province of Nineveh, American forces killed a civilian during a raid, and unknown gunmen killed two civilians in separate incidents.
NYT
The official deadline for passing an election law was October 15th. Elections can still be held on time if the parties agree on terms this week, but not much later, said Said Arikat, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, which proposed guidelines to break the logjam among the parties.
“This is really crunch time,” Mr. Arikat said. “We have everything in place to conduct an election on time. With every passing day, it becomes more difficult.” Any postponement in the elections carries the potential for slowing the withdrawal of American troops.
Legislators said they would continue to meet but that they were far from agreement. “Yes, we’re closer than a week ago,” said Osama Nujaifi, a parliament member from the Iraqiya bloc, who said he was confident that the elections would go forward as scheduled on Jan. 16.
Iraq’s top political leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki and President Jalal Talibani and their deputies, moved quickly Monday night to agree on a compromise in the wake of coordinated suicide bombings on government buildings that appeared intended to stall negotiations.
Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, of the Shiite Dawa party, said the recent bombings had added urgency to the election discussions, encouraging the parties to cooperate. “It makes us see the enemy and all want to join together,” he said.
Party members said there was broad general agreement on allowing people to vote for individual candidates, rather than lists. But the parties remained divided on laws governing elections in Kirkuk, an oil-rich province to the north of Baghdad that has long been a point of contention between Kurds and Arabs.
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator, said he was critical of the leaders’ proposed solution on Kirkuk, which would combine voting registration records from 2004 and 2009 to reflect the province changing population, which grew more Kurdish in those years. But he welcomed a United Nations proposal of using only 2009 records in the current election, then revisiting the question for future elections.
“It’s a great injustice to use the 2004 records,” Mr. Othman said, because many Kurds were driven from Kirkuk in ethnic cleansing campaigns under Saddam Hussein. He added, “If we don’t reach a solution this week, the election will be delayed, and we will have a constitutional vacuum after January 16th.”
The negotiations Tuesday took place against the backdrop of an announcement by the
Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of terrorist organizations that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a mostly homegrown group that American intelligence says has some foreign leadership. The group claimed credit for two recent bombing attacks and called the attack of October 25th — in which at least 155 people were killed and several government buildings destroyed — “the second stage of the good harvest plan.”
On Monday the Iraqi military arrested eight members of a terrorist cell it said was involved in the bombings as well as a similar attack on the foreign ministry in August.
As the party members debated election law, Baghdad’s governor, Salah Abdul Razzaq, called for the firing of the Minister of Interior and the operations commander over the recent bombings, which he blamed on negligence.
Also on Tuesday, in the northern province of Nineveh, American forces killed a civilian during a raid, and unknown gunmen killed two civilians in separate incidents.
NYT
posted by madtom at 5:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home