Largest Sunni faction signs deal with Shia-Kurd alliance

Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki yesterday declared that the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni faction, has signed a reconciliation deal with the alliance of Shia and Kurdish parties.

Mr Maliki said the Islamic Party, headed by vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi, a critic of the premier's policies, and the other four parties in the alliance had agreed to adopt key laws the US considers essential to achieving national reconciliation. If implemented, the accord could be the most significant political advance to take place since the Maliki government took office in the spring of 2006.

Mr Maliki made the announcement at a press conference atten- ded by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Sunni vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi; Shia vice-president Adel Abdel Mahdi; and Masoud Barzani, president of the federated Kurdish region.

The accord calls for ending the ban on former Baath party members resuming posts in the civil service and military, holding provincial elections, and creating a mechanism for releasing detainees held without charge, 85 per cent of whom are Sunnis. The draft oil law and constitutional amendments require further negotiations.

It appears, however, that the Islamic Party has not formally joined the alliance of Shias and Kurds. Senior party member, Omar Abdul Sattar, denied the party intends becoming a part of the alliance comprising the Shia fundamentalist Dawa party of Mr Maliki, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the two major Kurdish parties. To do so would require reversal of policy and abandonment of allies.

The Islamic Party, which ran in the 2006 election as part of the Iraqi Accordance Front winning 44 seats in the 275-member parliament, cannot speak for the rest of the coalition.

If the Islamic Party, the largest group in the front pulls out its deputies and chooses to augment the Shia-Kurdish alliance, it could secure a thin majority in parliament and claim to represent Iraq's three main communities. At present the Shia-Kurdish alliance has the support of only 110 deputies.

The Iraqi National List, with 25 seats, announced on Saturday that its five ministers, who have been boycotting cabinet meetings, would be withdrawing "finally" from Mr Maliki's rump government, leaving it with 20 of its original 37 ministers.

The List's head, Ayad Allawi, who served as interim premier, has recently hired an influential Washington public relations firm to promote his call for the removal of Mr Maliki and replacement of the current ethno-sectarian system of governance with a secular, pluralist system. Mr Allawi, a secular Shia who enjoys some Sunni backing, is one of the leading contenders for Mr Maliki's post.

In spite of the National List's defection, Mr Maliki is counting on the agreement with the Sunnis to strengthen the Shia-Kurdish alliance.

Yesterday he took a defiant stand against his critics in Washington. He castigated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Senator Carl Levin, who heads the upper house's powerful defence committee, for calling for the removal of the Iraqi government. He called on them to "come to their senses," and accused them of treating Iraq as "one of their villages."

Meanwhile, contradicting US claims that violence is down in Iraq due to the pacification campaign launched in mid-February, latest fatality figures show that war-related deaths have doubled in the past year, with the average daily toll rising from 33 in 2006 to 62 this year. Almost 1,000 more people died violently in Iraq in the first eight months of 2007 than during 2006.

The Associated Press, which tracks Iraqi deaths by means of morgue and hospital reports, says that so far this year 14,800 have died in attacks or been murdered as compared with 13,811 deaths in 2006. UN and other sources say fatalities are much higher.

Furthermore, the Iraqi Red Crescent reports the number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, from 477,337 on January 1st to 1.14 million on July 31st.