Iraqiya meeting laid strategy for consensus over PM – Dulaimi

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A meeting held by al-Iraqiya bloc in Baghdad on Saturday laid a strategy for the coming stage to reach consensus over a prime minister, according to the bloc member Kamel al-Dulaimi. “Al-Iraqiya has started its negotiations with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and al-Fadila (Virtue) Party with the objective of forming a government,” Dulaimi told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The conferees converged on the need that a prime minister should be chosen by consensus in a way that expresses all groups without any marginalization and that loyalty be to Iraq, not for certain party or sect,” he added. Earlier, Maysoon al-Damluji, the official spokesperson for al-Iraqiya, said the bloc would hold an “important” meeting today under its leader Iyad Allawi to discuss the outcome of his negotiations with other blocs and the coming steps towards forming a government. On the outcome of a meeting held on Friday between al-Iraqiya, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and Fadila (Virtue) Party, Damluji replied that it was “positive”. “The meeting saw an agreement over some common views regarding the materialization of a national project and the establishment of a partnership government in accordance with the constitution,” she said. Commenting on some media reports that members in Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawlat al-Qanoon (State of Law) bloc said legislators from al-Iraqiya expressed a wish to participate in a government led by Maliki, Damluji noted that these calls were “groundless”. “These are far-fetched wishes made only by those who made them,” she said, noting that al-Iraqiya’s position regarding a Maliki-led government is “clear and irrevocable”. Damluji pointed out that al-Iraqiya would never give up its national project for the sake of temporary gains or positions. The National Alliance (NA), which has 159 out of a total 325 parliamentary seats, had announced on Friday that it picked Maliki as a candidate for the prime minister post, ending nearly five months of haggling since it was set up and seven months after the March 7 legislative elections regarding the mechanisms to choose a prime minister in light of a conflict between the bloc’s key members Dawlat al-Qanoon (89 seats) and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), which obtained 70 seats. AmR (S) 1