Al-Halbousi outlines Iraqi national dialog agenda
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohamed Al-Halbousi called on Sunday for the inclusion of important issues in the National Dialog Table, which is led by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.
Al-Halbousi wrote in a tweet asking that the agenda of the national dialog sessions called for by Al-Kadhimi, the second round of which is scheduled to begin next week, include a number of issues that the political process cannot go without agreement.
Al-Halbousi set forth a number of demands, including “setting a date for the early parliamentary and provincial council elections no later than the end of next year, and electing the president of the republic, as well as choosing a fully-fledged government agreed upon and trusted by the people and its political forces”.
It also calls for “reinterpreting Article 76 of the constitution and abolishing the shameful circumvention of the article’s provisions, which occurred under political pressure after the 2010 elections”, he said.
These include “the adoption of the federal public budget law, the maintenance or amendment of the House of Representatives Election Law, and the enactment of the Federal Supreme Court law in accordance with article 92 of the Constitution”.
The Speaker of the Council of Representatives called for the national dialog table to include the issue of the redeployment of military and security forces of all types. The Ministry of the Interior will be responsible for deployment and the imposition of security in all cities.
Al-Halbousi called for dialog agenda items such as: “the immediate return of all the innocent displaced people who have been displaced from their homes and have not been able to return to them so far. Regulate the relationship between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government by a public agreement until the oil and gas law is approved”.
On Saturday, political sources spoke of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi inviting all political forces to a second dialog session next Monday to discuss the country’s crises and ways to find a consensual solution between all parties. On August 16, Al-Kadhimi invited the leaders of the political forces to a ‘national meeting” at the government palace in Baghdad, in order to start a “serious national dialog” to find solutions to the political crisis in the country. As the meetings began, the Sadrist movement announced that it would not participate in the political dialog meeting.
The country has been locked in an escalating political crisis for almost a year following early legislative elections, which have resulted in heated positions among both sides of Iraq’s Shia forces; Al-Sadr and the Coordinating Framework Forces reached the end of last month an armed clash that resulted in dozens of deaths and casualties.
Last July, days after his supporters stormed the presidential area and announced an open sit-in at the parliament building, al-Sadr called for dissolving the Council of Representatives and for the judiciary to take over the task of holding early legislative elections. He later announced his retirement from politics.
