More on election results crisis; Talabani has an initiative.

The different parties in conflict over the election results continued to make more statements in defense of their positions today.
Jawad al-Maliki of the Dawa Party said in a press conference for the UAI that talking about redoing the elections is not acceptable and that making threats is in no one’s interest and he warned that such threats voiced by some parties that can be classified under “terror threats” and can possibly be responded to under the “terror fighting law” considering that some threats were “provoking violence and threatening national stability”.

Al-Maliki said the UIA will submit complaints to the Iraqi Supreme Court to prosecute “those who threaten with violence”.
The Maram gathering-Maram according to Vahal is short for the Arabic equivalent for The Rejectionists of Fraudulent Elections Congress-is relentlessly moving on with their campaign in rejecting the results and demanding redoing the elections but it seems that this campaign is designed to apply more pressure on the Kurds and the UIA to get a bigger share in the government whether the elections are redone or not.

On the other hand the election commission made another update; A’adil al-Lami from the commission said today that they’re examining some 900 ballot boxes that showed suspicious results but he also said that these are not among the boxes that had their results announced. Also he mentioned that total number of complaints reached more than 1,500 including up to 35 major complaints (red zone or red flag) but he played down the significance of these complaints saying that even if all these complaints were valid, they will not significantly affect the final results.

Anyway, the real effort now seems to be what President Talabani is doing trying to reach an agreement with all concerned parties to form a national unity government.
Yesterday Talabani met Adnan al-Dulaimi from the Accord Front and asked him to stick to the legal ways in making their complaints and urged the Accord Front to stay away from the language of violence and threats.

It was announced that Talabani planned to have two more meetings, one with Abdulaziz al-Hakeem and the other with the Accord Front, the Iraqi national list and senior members of the Kurdish alliance but there are doubts that Allawi won’t be here to attend this meetings since some sources revealed that he’s currently in Washington.
These two meetings will prepare for another bigger meeting to which all the four big lists will be invited.
I think to have Allawi and the UIA sit to one table is more unlikely than to have the Front and the UIA meet and talk since the differences between Allawi and the UIA are getting bigger bigger.

In the same regard, the Sadrists have formed a delegation to talk to the rivals and try to approximate their positions but they confirmed that they will never meet with Allawi for the huge differences between the Sadrists and the Iraqi list.
Ridha Jawad Taqi from the SCIRI said that al-Hakkem is making lots of contacts with many parties including Allawi because “we in the SCIRI believe that we should not form the government alone and that all the other parties must have a role in it”.

And in his first comment since the elections, Ayatollah Sistani called on the political parties to unite and form a government that serves national unity.

But Abbas al-Bayati from the UIA had another opinion, he said “if the rejectionists decided to keep their stiff attitude and insisted on their objections, we will resort to forming the government with the Kurdish alliance” but Abdulkhaliq Zangana from the Kurdish alliance thinks it’s still early to talk about a UIA-Kurdish government.

Sunni sources reported that the Front has already discussed keeping Talabani in his post as part of a compromise.
In general, it seems that all parties are interested in Talabani’s initiative and to some extent optimistic about its prospects.


Christmas is here but this year Christians in Iraq decided to cancel all celebrations and parties they usually have in their social clubs and will limit the celebrations to ceremonies in churches for fear from terror attacks.
If you pray, take a moment and pray for peace in Iraq.

Merry Christmas to all…