Kurdish leaders were converging on Baghdad for last-minute talks yesterday with majority Shiites as both sides pressed to secure a deal to form a coalition government before the newly-elected parliament meets for the first time later this week.
In northern Iraq, gunmen killed Hussam Hilal Sarsam, a Kurdish cameraman for the Kurdish satellite channel KurdSat, witnesses who saw his corpse transported by Iraqi troops outside the governor's office in Mosul said.
Twenty kilometers south of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in Youssifiyah, said police Lieutenant Adnan Mohammed of the nearby Mahmudiyah hospital said. The blast missed a convoy of sport utility vehicles, hitting a civilian vehicle instead and wounding four civilians.
PHOTO: AP
In the capital, five bodyguards of Sa'ad al-Amily, the Health Ministry's director general, were wounded in a roadside bomb attack, a police captain said on condition of anonymity. The guards were heading to al-Amily's home to pick him up at the time, he said.
Shiites and Kurds have been haggling over the makeup of the new government ever since the Jan. 30 ballot elected a new national assembly. Parliament meets tomorrow.
The political deal calls for Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, to be named president. Conservative Islamic Dawa party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari of the Shiite majority United Iraqi Alliance coalition, would become prime minister.
"We're not interested in the government posts, we're more interested in Kurdistan and Iraq's interests," Talabani told reporters in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah, 260km northeast of Baghdad.
"We have made good progress. We have a common understanding with the United Iraqi Alliance that we should establish an Iraqi state based on the principles of federalism and respecting human and women's rights," Talabani said.
Ali al-Dabagh of the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance said he was optimistic a final deal would be reached before parliament meets Wednesday. But "if no agreement is reached, the first session of the national assembly will be held [tomorrow] anyway," he said.
Outside the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Sunday, Kurdish leaders met Sunday to hammer out final details on a coalition government in accordance with a deal reached earlier this month with the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of