Baghdad, (AKnews) – The Kurdistan Blocs Coalition (KBC) will back Ayad Allawi’s bid for the presidency of the National Council for Strategic Policies (NCSP) in line with the power-sharing deal signed in Erbil last year, says the bloc’s spokesman.
Muayyid Tayyeb said that the Kurds will vote in parliament for Allawi to head the council, at the same time condemning calls from the National Coalition, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, not to vote for the al-Iraqiya leader.
“The calls not to vote for Allawi will increase the crisis between al-Iraqiya and the SLC,” he said, “…all the political blocs agree with each other apart from the SLC and al-Iraqiya.”
The leaders of the political blocs – currently engaged in a series of multi-party talks to resolve issues of contention between them – agreed last week to activate the National Council for Strategic Policies within the next two weeks.
The Office of the Presidency of the Republic announced on Sunday that the draft law of the NCSP will be submitted to parliament for discussion and approval within 48 hours.
In October 2010, Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani launched an initiative, the Erbil agreement, by which all Iraqi political leaders agreed to form a national-partnership government thus bringing to an end a 9-month political impasse over the country’s three key executive seats of power.
Under the Erbil agreement, Maliki and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani – a Kurd – were to retain their offices for a second term, and al-Iraqiya List leader Ayad Allawi, who secured a narrow majority of votes in the elections, would head a new executive body called the National Council for Strategic Policies (NCSP) as an attempt to maintain balance.
The council is expected to be responsible for drafting internal, foreign, economic and security policies, as well as forming strategies for managing the country’s natural resources and energy.
With the NCSP still unformed since the new government was inaugurated in December last year, the al-Iraqiya List has repeatedly accused Maliki – whose list only overcame Allawi’s by controversially forming a super-bloc, the National Coalition (NC), with the Sadrist Current following the elections – of not abiding to the terms of the Erbil agreement.
In an attempt to broker peace between the feuding political blocs once more, President Talabani brought the leaders of the political factions together recently in his Baghdad home for a series of talks intended to resolve the outstanding points of contention between them.
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