Kurdish MP says Talabani naming for presidency constitutional

BAGHDAD /Iraqi News An Iraqi lawmaker from the Kurdistan Alliance said on Saturday that her bloc’s naming of incumbent Iraqi President Jalal Talabani for the presidency is commensurate with the constitution that stresses the principle of equal opportunities. “There is no text in the constitution stipulating that a person nominated for the presidential post in Iraq has to be of Arab ethnicity,” Tania Talaat told Iraqi News. “Items 14, 16 and 68 of the Iraqi constitution are crystal clear regarding the post of president of the state. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a member of the Presidency Council, should be defending the constitution,” Talaat said. She noted that statements by Hashemi’s office that the nomination of Talabani for the presidency as “unconstitutional” “would cause a split amongst the groups of the Iraqi people in a very critical time when all blocs need to understand each other to outline a government platform for the next period in the country”. Earlier on Saturday, Hashemi’s office said in a statement that he has the right to express his wish about the person to the future president of Iraq. A member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s al-Iraqiya bloc denied that incumbent Vice President Hashemi was named for the presidential post, not so far the issue of posts have not been deliberated. “There is no agreement regarding this matter yet. The bloc is waiting for the election results to be announced and only then it would talk about dialogues with the other blocs and settle differences,” Jamal al-Bateekh told Iraqi News. Earlier, a member of the al-Iraqiya bloc’s Tajdeed (Renewal) List said the bloc is “still” calling that Hashemi be the president of Iraq, dismissing a spokeswoman’s statements as “personal”. “The al-Iraqiya bloc agrees that the post of president of Iraq should be occupied by an Arab person and still wants the post to be specifically reserved for Hashemi,” Abdulkareem al-Samarraie said in an interview with the semi-official al-Iraqiya news channel. Al-Iraqiya spokeswoman Maysoon al-Damlooji had said that there was no one named for the presidential post in Iraq. The current president of Iraq is Talabani, a Kurd and the leader of one of Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). AmR (I) 3