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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki poured fresh fuel into the country’s burning faultlines yesterday by rejecting his United States sponsors’ demand for a broad-based “national salvation” government.
The fiercely sectarian Shi’ite leader dismissed calls from US President Barack Obama for party leaders to bury their differences and unite against Sunni fundamentalist forces which stand at the gates of the capital Baghdad.
In a televised address Mr Maliki branded the idea of a united government encompassing the three main parliamentary forces “a coup against the constitution and the political process.”
He claimed that political “rebels against the constitution” posed a more serious danger to Iraq than the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) extremists who have taken over vast swathes of the country.
Mr Maliki has spent most of his eight years in office reinforcing his own position and has heavily favoured his Shi’ite allies.
But his State of Law party — the largest in parliament — won just 92 of 328 seats, meaning that re-election later this year for a further four-year term is by no means certain.
And he appears increasingly content for the country to be carved up along religious and ethnic lines so long as his own position is maintained in a rump “Iraq” to the south and east of Baghdad.
However, the arrival of US advisers on the ground this week means that his continued hold on power is by no means certain.
Washington appears to have tied its offer of anti-Isis air strikes to a more viable client regime — and one that is not so close to Iran.
Former interim PM Ayad Allawi is among those eyeing up Mr Maliki’s position.
Mr Allawi has called for the incumbent to make way for an interim government to co-ordinate the defence of the capital.
Increasingly desperate contortions in US foreign policy were underlined yesterday when it complained that the government in neighbouring Syria, which Washington opposes, had mounted air strikes inside Iraq’s borders against Sunni extremists also opposed by Washington but backed by US client state Saudi Arabia.
