Our politicians realize that we're not going to wait forever for them to form a government, neither is the world so they have increased the frequency of their meetings and statements in the hope that this can accelerate the process.
Whether they will succeed in this effort to save time or not is unclear yet but anyway, at least they are doing something!
Yesterday there has been a meeting for the leaders of Iraq's major political blocs and the American ambassador in Kurdistan that we heard of only today. Nothing leaked from this meeting but what's noticed about it is Jafari's absence who probably had to remain in Baghdad to meet the British foreign minister who arrived yesterday.
But actually the interesting thing is that-and according to Abbas al-Bayati of the UIA-is that the American ambassador and the leaders of the UIA didn't actually meet although they were all in Kurdistan, al-Bayati explained "the ambassador didn't show up during our meeting with the Kurdish alliance but he was there during the meetings between the Kurds, the Accord Front and Allawi".
Jafari in a joint press conference with Jack Straw in Baghdad responded rather harshly to Khalil Zad's statement of yesterday. Jafari said that he would not accept being told what to do, in reference to Zad's advices which Jafari described as "interference with Iraq's internal affairs".
Straw was there in another press conference that we saw on TV today but this time with Talabani who didn't lash out at Zad but instead rejected the Iranian call on the UK to pull its troops out of Basra and said "This matter can only decided by the Iraqi government and we need the British troops to remain in Iraq until we have enough well-trained Iraqi troops to replace them".
The prominent Kurdish politician Fouad Ma'soum told al-Bayina newspaper (which speaks for the Da'wa party) about the some interesting findings regarding the latest 3 meetings between the UIA and the Kurdish alliance. Ma'soum mentioned that the representatives of the Fadheela part didn't show up in any of the 3 meetings from which he concluded that Fadheela is not getting along well with the rest of the UIA members.
Ma'soum added that he asked the UIA if the redline on Allawi's bloc was adopted by the Sadrists only, to which the UIA delegation reportedly responded by saying "No, this attitude is adopted by the entire bloc".
Both the political editor of al-Bayina in today's op-ed and Mowaffaq al-Rubai'I in an interview on the 1st page denounced Khalil Zad's warning tone and considered it a chapter of "an international and regional conspiracy against the Shia aiming at marginalizing the Shia who had been oppressed for decades after decades".
The editor went on saying "the Shia represented by the UIA are committed to their national principles and are not willing to compromise on these principles…one fatwa from Ayatollah Sistani is enough to make the earth tremble beneath the feet of the American occupiers…".
It's really strange to see such overreaction on the part of the UIA, I mean just because they've been asked to avoid appointing people with sectarian inclinations in sensitive cabinet posts like the interior and defense it doesn't mean one should respond like this while the UIA's reactions to the real interference from Iran were so shy and diplomatic?
When are we Iraqis going to stop playing the victim role at every appropriate and inappropriate occasion!
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