BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament postponed the election of the country’s president on Tuesday to allow Kurdish rivals time to agree on a candidate.
The parliament delayed the session, the official INA press agency reported, without saying whether a new date had been agreed.
The agency reported earlier that speaker Haibat Al-Halbussi received requests from Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), to postpone the vote to “allow both parties more time” to reach a deal.
By convention, a Shiite Muslim holds the powerful post of prime minister, the parliament speaker is a Sunni and the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.
Under a tacit agreement between the two main Kurdish parties, a PUK member holds the Iraqi presidency, while the president and regional premier of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region is selected from the KDP.
But this time the KDP named its own candidate for Iraq’s presidency: Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein.
Once elected, the president will then have 15 days to appoint a prime minister, expected to be former premier Nouri Al-Maliki.
On Saturday, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shiite parties with varying ties to Iran that holds a parliamentary majority, endorsed Maliki.
But his nomination appeared to stoke concern in Washington.
The 75-year-old shrewd politician is Iraq’s only two-term premier (2006-2014) since the 2003 US invasion.
Seen as close to Iran, Al-Maliki left power in 2014 following heated pressure from Washington.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned on Sunday against a pro-Iranian government in Iraq.
An Iraqi source close to the Coordination Framework told AFP that Washington had conveyed that it “holds a negative view of previous governments led by former prime minister Maliki.”
In a letter, US representatives said that while the selection of the prime minister is an Iraqi decision, “the United States will make its own sovereign decisions regarding the next government in line with American interests.”
Another Iraqi source confirmed the letter, adding that the Shiite alliance had still moved forward with its choice, confident that Al-Maliki could allay Washington’s concerns.
Iraq has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, with successive governments negotiating a delicate balance between the two foes.
Iraq’s new premier will be expected to address Washington’s longstanding demand that Baghdad disarm Tehran-backed factions, many of which are designated terrorist groups by the US.
Iraq’s parliament delays presidential vote
https://arab.news/9y8t3
Iraq’s parliament delays presidential vote
- Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties, who ususally put forward a candidate for president, asked to postpone the vote
- Once elected, the president will then have 15 days to appoint a prime minister
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
