Iraq’s Shiite alliance turned down a Saudi Arabian offer on Saturday to host all-party talks to resolve months of political stalemate because it said it was confident a deal could be struck in Baghdad on a new government.
Iraq has been without a new government since a March 7 election that failed to produce a clear winner, leaving Shiite Muslim, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians jockeying for power and position.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had invited Iraq’s parties to talks in Riyadh under the auspices of the 22-nation Arab League after the annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage ending around Nov. 18, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Saturday.
Iraqiya, the cross-sectarian Sunni-backed political bloc that received the most votes in the election but failed to win an outright majority in parliament, welcomed the Saudi initiative and said Turkey and Iran should also be invited.
The National Alliance, a merger of Iraq’s Shiite-led blocs, including that of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s coalition, said a deal in Baghdad was close after the highest court ordered parliament to resume sessions last week.
“We are confident the representatives of the Iraqi people are able ... to reach a deal to form a national partnership government,” said Legislator Hassan al-Sunaid, reading from a statement that he said came from the Shiite National Alliance.
“Though we express our appreciation to Saudi Arabia for its concern about the situation in Iraq and its willingness to provide support, we would like to confirm Iraqi leaders are continuing ... their meetings to reach a national consensus,” al-Sunaid said.
Sunaid, a senior member of Maliki’s bloc, said the statement was supported by the Kurdish Alliance, which has 57 seats in parliament and is being wooed by Maliki’s camp to form a coalition government.
The Kurdish bloc was not immediately available for comment.
The sectarian strife triggered after the 2003 US-led invasion has receded but the lack of a government has sparked concerns among Iraq’s neighbors of a rise in violence as US forces withdraw.
“Everyone believes that you are at a crossroad that requires doing the utmost efforts to unite, get over traumas and conflicts, and get rid of sectarianism,” SPA quoted King Abdullah as saying in comments addressed to Iraqi leaders.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS