Iraqi parties yesterday geared up for the start of tough negotiations on forming a national unity government after rebels launched a series of attacks to coincide with the release of election results.
Meanwhile, a kidnappers' deadline expired with no word on the fate of US reporter Jill Carroll, whose parents have appealed to captors to spare her life.
Political parties yesterday had 48 hours to appeal the results of the Dec. 15 elections after the electoral commission on Friday released final, but uncertified figures following a month-long investigation into allegations of fraud, which led to the cancellation of less than 1 percent of the ballots.
The elections were marked by voting along ethnic and sectarian lines, with the ruling Shiite religious-based United Iraqi Alliance, which includes Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa Party and Abdel Aziz Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, winning 128 of parliament's 275 seats.
The Kurdish Alliance came second with 53 seats, while a variety of Sunni Arab parties, who had only a handful of members of parliament in the outgoing assembly, more than tripled their representation to a total of 58 seats in the new parliament, to be known as the Council of Representatives.
The US, Britain and the UN all welcomed the results of the parliamentary elections.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stressed that Washington wanted majority Shiites, Kurds, Sunni Arabs and others to "work together in cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic efforts to think about forming a government."
"The Iraqi people will be looking to them to form an effective, responsible government that responds to their needs and a government that is responsive to all Iraqis, regardless of ethnic group or religious group," he said.
The spokesman sought to play down deep divisions between Iraq's religious and ethnic communities, saying "identity politics" were the result of [former Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein's repressive rule.
"That's really a vestige of Saddam Hussein's era where he ruled by dividing and conquering," he said.
In Baghdad, it was expected that a number of parties, including some of the Sunni-based factions which had earlier complained of fraud, would appeal the election results to a judicial commission which will have two weeks to rule on the matter before final results are certified and parliament can meet.
But politicians were already gearing up for negotiations on forming a coalition government with the majority Shiites and their Kurdish allies most likely to be calling the shots.
Meanwhile, in the latest violence, five members of the Iraqi president's staff were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their motorcade north of Baghdad, police said yesterday, adding that President Jalal Talabani was not present.
Lieutenant Colonel Abbas Mohammed al-Bayati said the bomb went off as the convoy entered the town of Tuz Khurmatu, 70km south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk late on Friday. A presidential spokesman declined to comment.
Police said an adviser to Talabani was among the wounded, but the extent of his injuries was not known. The convoy had been heading to Baghdad from Kurdistan when it was attacked. Talabani is a Kurd.
Within minutes of the election results being released on Friday, rebels launched mortar attacks on two US bases in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, causing minor injuries among US soldiers.
Meanwhile, a delegation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations was due in Baghdad yesterday to appeal for the release of Carroll, abducted in Baghdad on Jan. 7 by gunmen who shot dead her interpreter.
Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq and Muslims around the world pleaded for her release on Friday, hours before the expiration of a deadline set by kidnappers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing