3/13/2005 4:00:00 PM GMT
A meeting between Kurdish and Shiite representatives expected to seal agreement on the new government has been postponed while Kurdish leaders continue to discuss the terms, officials from both sides said.
Talks between the Shiite alliance and Kurds will be resumed after the parliament's first meeting, due to be held on Wednesday, Iraqi Deputy President Rowsch Shways said.
"The talks will continue and there are some important points that deserve more discussion," Fouad Massoum, a Kurd and interim parliamentary speaker, said in the northern city of Arbil.
Leaders of the Kurdish alliance's two factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have been debating the draft deal concluded with the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) last week, a KDP source said.
Following the January 30th elections, both groups have the two-thirds majority needed in order to form a government and their failure to reach a deal could leave Iraq in political limbo.
UIA official Adnan Ali said earlier that the talks have been delayed, and that KDP leader Massoud Barzani was reviewing the terms with negotiators.
Barzani hinted at dissatisfaction with the deal in an interview Friday saying he wanted agreement on Kurdish claims to the ethnically divided northern oil centre of Kirkuk to be discussed now rather than later.
"We do not agree on postponing this matter until after the constitution, we must agree on the issue of Kirkuk now," he told the pan-Arab news broadcaster Al-Arabiya.
The latest delays came after Ahmad Chalabi, a leading member of the UIA, returned from a trip to Iraqi Kudistan on Saturday empty-handed.
"The meetings have collapsed. There was no deal," an aide to Chalabi said.
Kurdish politicians went further, saying the Shi'ite alliance was trying to blame them for the crisis that has paralyzed decision-making in a country plagued by violence and starved of investment needed for rebuilding.
"They want to lay the responsibility for the political equation solely on the Kurdish side," interim Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd, told al-Arabiya television.
"We are willing to sacrifice the presidency to the Shi'ites if the Shi'ites sacrifice the premiership to a Sunni," Salih said ironically, reflecting Iraq's failure to put aside sectarian divisions.
The Kurds have been seeking an undertaking from the Shiites that they will respect provisions regarding Kirkuk in an interim constitution adopted under the U.S.-led occupation last year.
The text sets out steps to redress the expulsion of around 100,000 Kurds from Kirkuk, and also provides for a secular and federal Iraq.