Iraq's leadership ended three days of talks aimed at breaking an eight-month power vacuum without announcing any success, and now face a meeting of parliament on Thursday to elect a speaker, the first step toward forming a government, a parliamentary source said.
"They decided that Parliament will meet tomorrow at 3:00 pm (1200 GMT)," the source said on Wednesday night without providing further details.
Eleventh-hour talks had continued well into the night on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki showing no sign of comprising with his main rival ahead of the key parliamentary meeting.
Talks had resumed during the afternoon at the Baghdad home of Massud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdistan region, after ex-premier Iyad Allawi, who narrowly won March elections, returned to the table.
Allawi, whose Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc is jockeying for power against Maliki's Shiite State of Law alliance, stayed away on Tuesday after attending the opening of talks a day earlier.
Earlier on Wednesday, Maliki blasted his Sunni rivals for their boycott the previous day, and hardened a stance that has left the country without a government since inconclusive March 7 elections.
"Even if there are differences it should be remembered that we are in the same boat," Maliki said after Allawi failed to show up at Tuesday's meeting.
"But if these differences are not managed responsibly they can easily degenerate into conflict," Maliki said against the background of a flare-up in violence that some leaders blame on the power vacuum.
"We must take up the challenges that arise, not allow conspirators to return and put their hand into all that we have achieved," Maliki said in an apparent barb at Allawi, who is a former member of the Baath party that was led by executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
Iraqiya members said they were being pressed to accept the post of parliament speaker, leaving the premiership to the Shiites and allowing the Kurds to retain the presidency.
An MP close to Allawi told AFP on Tuesday that Iraqiya's leader had stayed away because the party did not want to relinquish the prospect of taking the presidency or the premiership and have to settle for the speaker's job.
Last month, the supreme court ordered MPs to end a hiatus and resume work, starting with choosing a speaker on Thursday.
Once a speaker is chosen, parliament then elects the president of the country, who nominates the prime minister.
Quoted in Al-Sabah newspaper on Tuesday, Shawis pointed to remaining obstacles to a deal — demands for constitutional amendments, reforms in the functioning of government, guarantees for the Kurds and over the future of a commission that tracks down former regime officials.
The Kurds are kingmakers by virtue of their number of seats in parliament. They have been trying to extract as many concessions as possible from both sides in return for their support.
The Kurdish coalition has reportedly thrown its backing behind Maliki, but Barzani said on Monday his bloc's final position on whom it backs for the three top posts would be announced after the Baghdad talks.
On Tuesday, Maliki appeared to be speaking from a position of strength, thanks to the support of several groups that assure him 148 seats in parliament, only 15 short of an absolute majority in the 325-seat house.
Together, the Shiites and Kurds have enough seats in parliament to form a government, but leaving out Allawi would almost certainly mean a renewal of Sunni-Shiite violence that has flared since the US-led 2003 invasion.
A string of anti-Christian bombings on Wednesday killed six people, only days after a hostage crisis at a Baghdad cathedral by Al-Qaeda gunmen that killed 44 worshippers and two priests.
Scores have also been killed in bomb attacks this month on Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, and Iraq's predominantly Shiite southern cities.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
