Iraq's political leaders have finally met face-to-face in an effort to resolve the country's crisis of government. But how much progress are they likely to achieve, asks Salah Hemeid Eight months after the country's inconclusive parliamentary elections, the leaders of Iraq's Kurdish, Shia and Sunni Muslim blocs opened discussions on Monday with a view to finalising a power-sharing deal on a new government. The meetings, hosted by Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani, aimed to nominate a prime minister, president and parliamentary speaker for the country in time for a parliamentary vote scheduled for today. The leaders travelled to Arbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, after reports that they had agreed to a power- sharing agreement that would give incumbent Iraqi prime minister and Shia politician Nuri Al-Maliki a second term in office. Under the agreement, Jalal Talabani would continue as president and Al-Maliki as prime minister, while the Sunni-backed Iraqiya List would choose its candidate for parliamentary speaker. Efforts to form a new government have previously stumbled over who should be the country's new prime minister, as both frontrunner Al-Maliki and former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a Shia politician who ran on a secular ticket, failed to secure an outright majority in the new parliament. Al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition won 89 seats in the elections, two fewer than Allawi's Iraqiya List, but he later secured support from some 50 other Shia members enabling him to forge a National Alliance. Since the 7 March poll, Iraq's 325-seat parliament has met for just 20 minutes, and the country has set a new world record for the longest time ever taken to form a government. Hopes for a swift deal on a new Iraqi government were dashed after the March elections, leading to a prolonged period of political deadlock and increasing instability. Monday's breakthrough came after the Kurdish Alliance, with its 43 members of parliament, agreed to join the National Alliance representing the main Shia parties and led by Al-Maliki, giving the Shia-Kurdish alliance a comfortable majority in the new parliament and enough to form a new government. The Arbil meeting reportedly also comes after strong pressure from US President Barack Obama and Vice- President Joe Biden, as well as an increasing regional push for a settlement of the Iraqi crisis. While the United States fears that excluding the Iraqiya List from power could reinvigorate a weakened but still lethal Sunni Islamist-led insurgency, Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbours and Turkey also fear increasing Iranian influence in Iraq if Sunnis are marginalised. On Sunday, Obama spoke of his frustration at the failure of Iraqi politicians to bridge their differences and form a new government. As the conference opened on Monday in Arbil, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton urged Iraq's rival political factions to form an inclusive power-sharing government. Last week, Saudi Arabia invited the Iraqi leaders to a reconciliation meeting in Riyadh in a bid to push Iraq's political leaders into overcoming the country's political deadlock. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Sunday also traveled to Baghdad in order to urge Iraqi political groups to gather around the same table and form a new government. Ahead of his flight to Baghdad, Davutoglu held telephone conversations with the foreign ministers of Iraq's other neighbours, on Monday flying to Riyadh for talks with Saudi leaders, including King Abdullah, on the Iraqi crisis. At the conference venue itself, which was saturated with the political usual spin, the air was thick with competing policy statements, as the leaders tried to outline their priorities in the talks. While all insisted that Iraq needed a government of "national partnership," the leaders differed on how to define this. Allawi and his Sunni allies, energised by the number of seats they hold in parliament, insisted that they should be part of the decision-making process and of the running of the government's day-to-day affairs. "Our position is crystal clear. Partnership means partnership in taking key decisions, [an equal] distribution of power and guarantees to implement any agreement," Allawi told the conference. Meanwhile, Al-Maliki and the Shia representatives fired back, insisting on the swift formation of a new government and urging delay on controversial issues that can be tackled at a later stage by parliament. "The blocs should reach an agreement on whatever can be agreed upon now. We cannot solve everything at once," Al-Maliki told participants. "If things stay at a standstill, there will be no agreement," he said. As the divided Iraqi leaders wrangled over how to resolve their disagreements, two car bombs aimed at Shia pilgrims exploded near two of the holiest shrines for Shia Muslims. The attacks, in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, killed 11 people and wounded about 50 others, and they followed a bloody week in the capital. They also heightened concerns that Sunni insurgent groups were trying to whip up sectarian bloodshed in the country at a politically precarious moment. The ongoing violence indicates that Iraqi politics is still volatile and still gripped by the uncertainty that set in following the 2003 US-led invasion. The country's Shia leaders, backed by the Kurds, now want to reach a broad agreement before Thursday's parliamentary session. However, Allawi must be convinced to join the deal if the next government is to have a chance of securing peace after more than seven years of sectarian violence. The Shia bloc hopes that the discussions, which later moved to Baghdad, will yield Sunni concessions before the 9 November deadline for the parliament to reconvene. Analysts see two broad strategies that the country's Shias might now pursue: either to seek to cut deals with Iraqiya, or to embrace the prospect of a stalemate and reject its demands. It is unclear how effective a role the Shia bloc will be able to give Allawi and others in the Iraqiya List, which seeks to expand Sunni power over government policy, especially security. Judging by the results of eight months of negotiations, it is unlikely that the Shia bloc will be able to force the Sunni Iraqiya List to give up demands for equal status in the next government. The other option that the Shia bloc might pursue is to persuade Sunni lawmakers from the Iraqiya List to defect, with dissenters joining a new government. However, it is still Allawi and other senior leaders of the Iraqiya List that the Shia bloc needs to win over. The Sunnis want to keep Allawi at the head of their bloc, in order to show that they at least are not sectarian and hoping that prioritising repair of the sect-based political process will pay dividends. The Sunnis, who ruled Iraq since the modern nation came into being in 1921 to the fall of Saddam Hussein, have indicated that a deal to form a national-unity government with Al-Maliki and other Shia politicians will not work without a change in the political system that will make them equal partners with Shias and not a minority in a Shia government. For their part, the country's Shia leaders, today the holders of power, will be wary of showing signs of moderation for fear of prompting challenges to their newly acquired authority. To underscore his defiance, Al-Maliki vowed Wednesday that he will go ahead with plans to convene Thursday's parliament session and form a government even if Allawi will not join in. "This will be the beginning of a new Iraqi state and not only a new Iraqi government," he boasted. Whatever the future may hold on the formation of a new government, it is unfortunately still unlikely that a new government will mean an improvement in ordinary Iraqis' living conditions, even if it should reduce the chances of the country slipping back into civil war. Iraq's politicians have proven up to now that they are more concerned to plunder the state's resources than to work to improve the welfare of the country's population.
