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| Iraq |
| Shiites, Kurds agree to open gov't to Sunnis |
| 2005-12-28 |
| Leaders of the Shiite and Kurdish blocs that emerged triumphant in this month's Iraqi election agreed on Tuesday to push ahead with efforts to bring Sunni and other parties into a grand coalition government. The visit of Abdul Aziz Al Hakim of the Shiite Islamist Alliance to the Kurdish capital Erbil opened a series of planned meetings among rival factions intended to ease friction over election results which Sunni and secular parties say have been rigged and to begin building a consensus administration. âWe agreed on the principle of forming a government involving all the parties with a wide popular base,â Kurdish regional leader Masoud Barzani told a joint news conference after talks with Hakim, the dominant force in the alliance. Hakim, whose bloc has run the interim government for the past year in coalition with the Kurds, was due to meet the other main Kurdish leader, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, on Wednesday, launching a series of bilateral meetings that will include Sunni Arab and secular leaders disappointed in the vote. In Baghdad, several thousand supporters of secular former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi marched in the latest street protest against the results of the December 15 ballot. They want a rerun of a vote that handed close to a majority to the alliance, whose armed supporters they accuse of forming Islamist death squads. Privately, however, many disappointed leaders acknowledge the results will stand and say they will negotiate a coalition. After meeting Hakim, Talabani will see, among others, Allawi, a secular Shiite, and Sunnis Adnan Al Dulaimi and Tariq Al Hashemi of the Accordance Front, Planning Minister Barham Saleh, a senior official in Talabani's party, said. |
| Posted by:Fred |