An alliance of major Shiite religious parties, which swept Iraq's historic election in January, has agreed to remain together to contest next month's parliamentary ballot, an official said yesterday.
Meanwhile, roadside bombs killed two American soldiers in Baghdad and in Ramadi, west of the capital, on Thursday, raising the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to 2,007, according to an AP count.
The decision by the United Iraqi Alliance to stay unified could ensure that its religious parties, which all have strong Iranian ties, remain a prominent force in Iraq's next parliament. The alliance's move also appeared to indicate that the national election on Dec. 15 will once again be contested along ethnic and sectarian lines: the main Shiite coalition, secular alliances of Shiites and Sunnis, and separate Sunni Arab and Kurdish slates.
But behind-the-scene talks by the parties were still under way ahead of yesterday evening's deadline for them to submit their final list of coalition candidates to the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, or IECI.
The United Iraqi Alliance includes Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Dawa Party, Shiite cleric Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrist movement of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Fadhila party, a Shiite group whose spiritual leader is al-Sadr's late father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr.
"The final shape of the United Iraqi Alliance list is complete, and it is going to be submitted today to the IECI. It contains its four major parties," Sheik Khalid AL-Atiya, a senior official of the Dawa Party, said.
The alliance currently controls 146 of the 275 seats in Iraq's National Assembly. But the coalition is not expected to do as well as it did in the January election. Most of its success then was credited to the support of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. But associates of the Iranian-born al-Sistani have said that the 76-year-old cleric does not intend to publicly support the United Iraqi Alliance, as he did in January, because of his disappointment with the performance with al-Jaafari's government.
The Jan. 30 election, which chose Iraq's current parliament, was boycotted by most Sunni Arabs, embittered over the loss of the domination they had enjoyed under the rule of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a fellow Sunni. But many Sunni Arabs voted in the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, and many also plan to take part in the Dec. 15 election in an effort to win more seats in parliament.
On Wednesday, leaders of the three Sunni groups -- the General Conference for the People of Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Dialogue -- announced they would field a joint slate of candidates and work together in the new parliament to promote Sunni interests. Its agenda is expected to include a call for the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq -- if progress can be made in building national institutions.
Iraq's two largest Kurdish parties, President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Masoud Barzani, also announced that their alliance will remain in place for the December vote.
Shiite politicians were trying to persuade Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon insider, to join the United Iraqi Alliance ticket. Chalabi ran under the Alliance standard in January but is apparently holding out for a promise of a greater role if the Shiites control the next government.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS