Abu Ardvark rapportera på sin blog hur den irakiska politiska processen helt kollapsat och någon slags samförstående verkar helt borta. Vilket naturligtvis påverkar Bush administrationens försök att vissa på framsteg i Irak.
Abu Aardvark: Iraq’s emergency political summit fails
Lost in the reporting of the unbelievable horrific terrorist attack in northern Iraq is a bit of a political bombshell. Al-Arabiya is reporting that the emergency political summit of Iraq’s leaders has failed to produce even nominal political reconciliation.
This is a devastating outcome for the Maliki government and for
those Americans who hoped to have some political progress to show in
the upcoming Crocker/Petraeus report. There’s no other way to
spin this: this summit was billed as the last chance, and it has
failed.The background is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had called an
emergency political summit to deal with the political crisis sparked by
the withdrawal of the Sunni al-Tawafuq Bloc and the suspension of
participation by the members of Iyad Allawi’s Iraq Bloc from Maliki’s
government. Much of the Iraqi and Arab press portrayed this as a
last-chance effort to salvage the Maliki government, certainly before
the Petraeus-Crocker report but probably for good. Talabani
summoned Maliki (Dawa, in his capacity as Prime Minister), Massoud
Barzani (in his capacity as head of the Kurdish region), Adel Abd
a-Mahdi (SIIC, in his capacity as Vice President), and Tareq al-Hashemi
(Iraqi Islamic Party/Tawafuq Bloc, in his capacity as Vice
President). Hashemi, after much back and forth about the
invitation, agreed to attend. Iyad Allawi’s bloc was
pointedly not invited, despite his public indications that he was quite
available. Nor were the Sadrists.
don’t bother trying to spot the Sunni. (picture courtesy of al-Arabiya)
