Iraq parties in talks over new PM
Qassem Soleimani in town amid unrelenting protests Ukraine president denies quid pro quo with Trump
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s rival parties were negotiating the contours of a new government yesterday, after the previous cabinet was brought down by a twomonth protest movement insisting on even more deep-rooted change. After just over a year in power, premier Adel Abdel Mahdi formally resigned Sunday after a dramatic intervention by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. That followed a wave of violence that pushed the protest toll to over 420 dead - the vast majority demonstrators.
Parliament on Sunday formally tasked President Barham Saleh with naming a new candidate, as prescribed by the constitution. But Iraq’s competing factions typically engage in drawn-out discussions and horsetrading before any official decisions are made. Talks over a new premier began even before Abdel Mahdi’s formal resignation, a senior political source and a government official told AFP. “The meetings are ongoing now,” the political source added.
Such discussions produced Abdel Mahdi as a candidate in 2018, but agreeing on a single name is expected to be more difficult this time around. “They understand it has to be a figure who is widely accepted by the diverse centers of power, not objected to by the marjaiyah (Shiite religious establishment), and not hated by the street,” said Harith Hasan, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
The candidate would also have to be acceptable to Iraq’s two main allies, arch-rivals Washington and Tehran. “The Iranians invested a lot in the political equation in last few years and won’t be willing to give up easily,” said Hasan. Tehran’s pointman on Iraq Qassem Soleimani, who heads the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, was in Iraq for talks on the political crisis, government sources told AFP.
‘Two sides of the same coin’ Protesters hit the streets in October in Iraq’s capital and Shiite-majority south to denounce the ruling system as corrupt, inept and under the sway of foreign powers. Iraq is the 12th most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International. Despite the oil wealth of OPEC’s second-biggest crude producer, one in five people lives below the poverty line and youth unemployment stands at one quarter, the World Bank says.
Demonstrators say those systemic problems require more deep-rooted solutions than Abdel Mahdi’s resignation. “We demand the entire government be changed from its roots up,” said Mohammad Al-Mashhadani, doctor protesting in Baghdad’s iconic Tahrir (Liberation) Square yesterday. Nearby, young law student Abdelmajid Al-Jumaili said that meant that the parliament and even the president would have to go. “If they get rid of Abdel Mahdi and bring someone else from the political class, then nothing changed. They’d just be two sides of the same coin,” said Jumaili.
But the protesters’ demand for an entirely new face has complicated the search for a new premier. Two political heavyweights said they had opted out of talks on a new PM: Former premier Haider Al-Abadi and the unpredictable cleric Moqtada Sadr, who had backed the previous government until protests erupted. “They’re aware the bar is too high and it’s too difficult for them to please the street,” said Hasan.
At the same time, a totally new player is unlikely to be trusted by the established political class. “The discussions now are over someone from the second or third tier of politicians,” the government source told AFP. “It’s not possible to have someone new. It has to be someone who understands the political machine to push things along.” —AFP
BERLIN: Ukraine’s president yesterday renewed his denial of a quid pro quo with Donald Trump over military aid, despite a growing case against the US president in impeachment proceedings in Washington. “I did not speak with US President Trump in those terms: you give me this, I give you that,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with European publications including Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
In remarks published in German, Zelensky said he “did not understand at all” the accusations heard at the hearings and did not “want to give an impression that we are beggars” in Ukraine. The scandal centers around a phone conversation on July 25 in which the Republican leader is suspected of putting pressure on Ukraine to launch investigations against former Democratic vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.
The key issue is whether Trump set up a “quid pro quo” - Latin for seeking one action in exchange for another - with Zelensky by holding back promised US military aid for Ukraine until the Bidens were investigated. In the interview published yesterday, Zelensky also played down expectations ahead of a summit on December 9 in Paris in which he is set to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time. He said that an end to the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could not be discussed until three preliminary steps had been taken. He said there should first be a prisoner exchange within a “reasonable time period”, followed by a genuine ceasefire and the retreat of all armed forces to allow local elections to be held in the region. “If these three issues are resolved, then we can see if everyone wants to put an end to the conflict.” The conflict in Ukraine, which broke out in 2014 after pro-Western politicians took power in Kiev and Russia annexed Crimea, has killed more than 13,000 people. —AFP