IRAQ: More ministers boycott Shi'it Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki cabinet

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government plunged deeper into crisis on Tuesday (August 7) when four ministers loyal to Iraq's first post-war leader Iyad Allawi said they would boycott future cabinet meetings. A total of 17 ministers in Maliki's cabinet have now quit or are boycotting meetings, at a time when he is under growing pressure from frustrated U.S. officials in Washington to make demonstrable progress in reconciling Iraq's warring sects. While Maliki went ahead with a planned trip to Turkey and Iran, the secular Iraqi List of former Prime Minister Allawi held a news conference in Baghdad to explain why they were boycotting the meetings, in which the embattled prime minister now only has a narrow working majority. "Due to the ongoing deterioration and failure to meet people's interests...ministers of the Iraqi National List will boycott the cabinet's meetings," leading Iraqi List lawmaker Iyad Jamal-Adin said at the news conference. He said the the ministers would continue to run their ministries, noting that the list had sent a list of demands to Prime Minister Maliki four months ago but he did not respond to it. "The Iraqi National List will reconsider its position again in the nearest future in the light of national and moral outcome and the government's stands," Jamal-Adin added. Infighting has paralysed the government, with no agreement on key laws to distribute oil revenues fairly, allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party back into the civil service or set a date for provincial elections. Sunni Arab, Shi'ite and Kurdish political leaders are due to hold a summit soon to try to break the deadlock in what one senior Western diplomat described at the weekend as Iraq's "moment of truth" for chances of a powersharing deal.

ITN Source | August 7, 2007

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