Pressure mounted yesterday on Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to stand down, as Kurdish and some Shiite officials said Iraq's new parliament would be ready to convene within days.
A recent surge of sectarian killings has complicated already snarled negotiations about a new government, which has prevented parliament from meeting since it was elected on Dec. 15. The vote was certified last month.
Early yesterday, police reported commandos from the Shiite-led interior ministry stormed a Sunni mosque in west Baghdad, killing three people and injuring seven in a 25-minute gunbattle. The reason for the clash was not immediately known.
PHOTO: AFP
Interior Ministry Major Falah al-Mohamadawi denied commandos were involved.
"There is no indication in our records that interior ministry's police commandos carried out the raid. The claims are not true," he said.
US officials say a coalition government that includes all Iraq's ethnic and religious communities is essential for stabilizing the country and allowing US and other foreign forces to start pulling out in the summer.
As the largest bloc in parliament, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance gets the first chance to form a government, but it does not have sufficient seats to do so on its own. Sunni, Kurdish and some secular parties are now pressing the Shiite Alliance to withdraw their nomination of al-Jaafari for a new term. He has served as prime minister in the transitional government that took power in April.
The Sunni Arab minority blames the prime minister for failing to control Shiite militiamen who attacked Sunni mosques and clerics after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra. More than 500 people were killed in the violence that followed, according to police and hospital accounts.
Khalaf al-Olayan, a leader of the main Sunni bloc, said Iraq has gone from "bad to worse."
"Al-Jaafari's government failed to solve the chaos that followed the Samarra explosions and did not take any measures to solve the security crisis that could have pushed the country into civil war," he said in comments posted on the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front Web site.
Kurds are angry because they believe al-Jaafari is holding up resolution of their claims to control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
``If al-Jaafari tries to form a government, he will not get any kind of cooperation,'' said Mahmoud Othman, a leading figure in parliament's Kurdish bloc.
President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, entered the fray on Saturday, saying the Shiite Alliance should choose another candidate for the sake of consensus.
"I want to be clear, it is not against Dr. al-Jaafari as a person. He has been my friend for 25 years," Talabani told reporters.
The Alliance itself is divided about who should be prime minister: Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote at a Feb. 12 Shiite caucus. Some members are troubled by al-Jaafari's ties to radical young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose support was key in defeating Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the choice of powerful Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
Al-Sadr and al-Hakim, who both have powerful militias behind them, are frequently at odds politically.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS