Reports on preliminary agreement inside National Coalition on nominating al-Maliki

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Sources inside the Iraqi National Coalition assert that there is a preliminary agreement to nominate Nouri al-Maliki to head the new government. “Things inside the INC go to nominate al-Maliki for a second term in office,” Khaled al-Asadi, a member of the Dawlat al-Qanoon (State of Law) bloc, told IraqiNews.com news agency. He ruled out the announcement of this nomination on Friday (Sept. 24). Differences among political blocs reached their zenith between the main two blocs, al-Iraqiya and the State of Law, with the first obtaining 91 out of the new parliament’s 325 seats while the second obtained?89. The State of Law formed a coalition with the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) to?garner the largest number of seats in the new parliament. This claim was rejected by al-Iraqiya bloc, which argued that it had been the winner of the largest number of seats in the parliament and that it has the right to form the new government. Iraq’s March 7 nationwide elections had ended with the success of four main Iraqi political blocs, with Allawi’s Iraqiya winning 91 seats, followed by Maliki’s State of Law with 89 seats, Ammar Al-Hakim’s INA with 70 seats and the Kurdistan Alliance of Iraqi Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barazani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as well as a number of Kurdish Islamic parties with 57 seats. SH (S) 1