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David Stanley Ford

Law standoff threatens January vote for Iraqis

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services    Comments Comment on this article0
Published: November 6, 2009

BAGHDAD — Iraqi lawmakers blew another deadline Thursday as they continued haggling over an election law that’s crucial to the country’s political stability and to the Obama administration’s plans for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops.

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At one point Thursday, it appeared Iraq’s Council of Representatives had reached a compromise on the main point of contention: how the oil-rich, ethnically tense province of Kirkuk should be represented in the Iraqi parliament.

No deal was reached with the parliament, however, and action was put off until at least Saturday.

The dispute among Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen threatens to paralyze Iraq’s brittle democracy.

The standoff is jeopardizing plans for national elections in mid-January, as well as the timetable for an orderly drawdown of the 120,000 U.S. troops here.

As the Thursday deadline passed, like others before it, the head of Iraq’s elections commission, Faraj al-Haidari, said the polls could still be organized if the elections law were passed Saturday.

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David Stanley Ford


Related Topics: Politics, War and Conflict, U.S. Armed Forces Activities, Armed Forces, Iraq War, Elections and Voting, U.S. Army Activities, Iraqi Politics, Middle East Politics


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