With Iraqi President Jalal Talabani being treated in Germany after a stroke, Iraq is without a key mediator as a new political crisis brews between the secular Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc and the Shiite prime minister.
Talabani’s stroke may in itself spark turmoil — his resignation or death could cause a protracted dispute over his successor.
The 79-year-old has sought to bring together feuding politicians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Arabs and Kurds, during political crises that have plagued Iraq in the past year.
After Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that 10 of Iraqi Finance Minister Rafa al-Essawi’s guards were arrested the previous day for alleged terrorism offenses, Talabani’s mediation skills will be sorely missed.
Essawi, a Sunni member of Iraqiya, told a news conference a “militia force” raided the ministry and his home “in an illegal act, without a judicial order,” and called on Maliki to quit “because he did not behave like a man of state.”
He spoke to journalists alongside Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, fellow members of the main Sunni-backed parliamentary bloc.
Maliki expressed “astonishment” at “linking the issue of the detainees with political disputes” and “trying to pull the whole country toward sectarian strife.”
However, a later statement from his office said some security force members “did not act professionally” during arrests made on Thursday, in an apparent admission of misconduct.
Iraqiya and other members of Maliki’s unstable national unity government have accused him of concentrating power in his own hands and moving toward a dictatorship, leading to calls for him to be removed from office.
Maliki’s opponents ultimately lacked the parliamentary votes to remove him, but Essawi called on Thursday for no-confidence proceedings to be reopened.
The arrest of Essawi’s guards comes almost exactly one year after Sunni Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi’s guards were arrested and accused of terrorism.
Hashemi himself — like Essawi, an Iraqiya member — eventually took refuge in Turkey and has since been given multiple death sentences for charges including murder, as have some of his guards.
Talabani, a Kurd, was hospitalized on Monday after suffering a stroke, and was airlifted to Germany on Thursday for specialist treatment.
“While on paper [Talabani’s] role is somewhat limited, his influence and mediation skills have gone a long way in smoothing over the country’s troubled political scene,” AKE Group analyst John Drake said.
“Some may describe his position as ‘ceremonial,’ but he has made it a lot more active, simply though dialogue and discussion, which play a strong role in Iraqi politics,” he said.
Should Talabani require replacing, choosing a successor would probably be drawn out, contentious and messy.
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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
RSS