The lack of a government nearly five months on from parliamentary elections is “embarrassing” and is impeding any long-term decision-making, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP on Thursday.
Zebari said the government had begun to “drift” and had consequently not taken strategic decisions, adding that he had avoided several foreign visits because he could not explain to other countries why no new government has yet been formed in Baghdad. “It’s embarrassing, to be honest with you, for me, and I have avoided a number of foreign visits,” Zebari said in his office in the newly refurbished Foreign Ministry building in central Baghdad.
Ex-premier Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc finished first in the March 7 polls with 91 seats in the 325-member Parliament, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law alliance winning 89.
Both, however, fell short of a parliamentary majority, and negotiations over assembling a coalition with other parties appear to have stalled.
A parliamentary session scheduled for Tuesday, only the second since the elections, was postponed indefinitely, with representatives of the various parties noting that no agreement had been reached.
“We must stop this drift. The government is working, it is functioning. It is not purely a caretaker government. At the same time, it doesn’t take serious strategic decisions – major agreements, major contracting, war and peace.”
Asked whether many such decisions had been taken since the start of the year, he replied simply: “No.”
In a further sign of a worsening security situation, militants killed 23 members of Iraq’s security forces across the country Thursday in a combination of shootings and roadside bombs that was a bitter demonstration of the dangers Iraqi forces still face.
The worst attack came in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah when 16 Iraqi security troops died in what appeared to have been coordinated killings by militants in a bold, daylight attack in the neighborhood that was once an insurgent stronghold, Iraqi police and army officials said.
The Azamiyah attack came on what was already a deadly day for Iraq’s security forces.
More than seven years after the US-led invasion, insurgents are increasingly targeting Iraqi security forces, as all but 50,000 US troops prepare to leave the country by the end of August.
As part of a security agreement between the US and Iraq, all American troops must leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Earlier Thursday, a suicide bomber drove a minibus into the main gate of an Iraqi Army base near Saddam Hussein’s hometown, killing four soldiers and wounding 10, said police and hospital officials.
In the western city of Fallujah, 65 kilometers west of Baghdad, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi army patrols killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded eight others, police and hospital officials in the city said.
In the northern city of Mosul, a bomb attached to a police vehicle killed one policeman and injured two others, a police official in the city said.
All officials spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Thursday’s attacks underline the fact that militant groups can still strike with lethal force across Iraq, despite their weakened capability that is the result of a massive and joint US and Iraqi security forces’ crackdown.
Also Thursday, an Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for a bombing on Monday that targeted the Baghdad offices of a pan-Arab television station, describing the deadly attack that killed six people as a victory against a “corrupt channel.” A statement posted on the website of the Islamic State of Iraq said the operation was carried out by a “hero of Islam” and was intended to hit the “mouthpieces of the wicked and evil.”
The Arabic-language news channel Al-Arabiya is one of the most popular in the Middle East but is perceived by insurgents as being pro-Western. A suicide bomber driving a minibus drove through at least two checkpoints before pulling up to the front of the station’s Baghdad office and blowing himself and his vehicle up.
“We take responsibility for targeting this corrupt channel, and we will not hesitate to hit any media office and chase its staffers if they insist on being a tool of war against almighty God and his prophet.” – AFP, AP, with The Daily Star
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