The two Iraqi leaders vying to become the nation’s next prime minister were to get personal pleas yesterday from US Vice President Joe Biden to end their rivalry, which has delayed the seating of a new government as US troops head home.
Biden, US President Barack Obama’s administration’s point man on Iraq issues, will discuss the stalled politics in separate meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his chief challenger, former prime minister Ayad Allawi.
Iraqi politicians have been bickering since the March 7 parliamentary election that left the country without a clear winner about who should have the right to form the next government.
PHOTO: AFP
Al-Maliki and Allawi largely have been driving the delays as each tries to outmaneuver the other for a majority share of support in parliament.
The Shiite prime minister’s State of Law coalition narrowly lost out to Allawi’s Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance during the election, 89 seats to 91 seats. However, both fell far short of the 163-seat majority needed to govern outright.
Al-Maliki’s appeared to gain an advantage after the election by joining forces with the Iranian-backed Iraqi National Alliance to form a super-Shiite coalition. However, even that partnership has been stalled by its inability to decide who will to pick for prime minister.
Biden was to meet early yesterday afternoon with Allawi, and later with al-Maliki. It was not clear if he would discuss the private meetings later with the media.
However, aides said late on Saturday that the vice president believes that the new government — whoever becomes prime minister — must represent all sides to avoid touching off sectarian tensions that could destabilize Iraq.
Charles Dunne, an Iraq expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Biden’s visit is a clear sign of “a new, more activist phase of American diplomacy in the election standoff.”
“There is a general worry that the United States is focusing on withdrawal and disengaging politically,” said Dunne, who worked on the National Security Council and at the Pentagon during the administration of former US president George W. Bush. “This makes [Iraqis] worry about their own ability to manage these political conflicts — and about the future of Iraqi democracy itself.”
Earlier yesterday Biden met with US troops in a ceremony during which a number of soldiers who have been serving with the US military were to be sworn in as American citizens.
Biden arrived in Baghdad on Saturday evening with his wife Jill for the long Fourth of July weekend, his second visit to Iraq so far this year.
There are 77,500 US soldiers in Iraq — compared to 92,000 in Afghanistan — but combat troops are due out by Sept. 1, with a training and advisory force to remain.
A senior aide to Biden insisted that the troop withdrawal would go ahead as planned.
Meanwhile, a female suicide bomber blew herself up yesterday in the governor’s compound of Iraq’s western Anbar Province, killing four people and wounding 23.
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