Allawi's scheme for the Baghdad Conference

Ayad Allawi--Former and almost certainly current CIA asset, former Ba'athist goon, former Interim Puppet Prime-Minister....

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Deconstructing the Allawi scheme
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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Accord Front leader links the "new front" scheme to the success or failure of the Baghdad Conference

A member of Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List, Osama al-Najafi, told an Al-Hayat reporter that both Allawi and US ambassador Khalilzad are in Kurdistan for talks with leaders there. Allawi is trying to convince the leaders of the Kurdish coalition in the national parliament to join the "new front" he is forming, since the Kurds have a big weight in parliament and in the current government. And Najafi told the reporter that Khalilzad's presence there indicates the US supports the Allawi plan.

The reporter then recites the contents of the announcement made Friday by a spokesman for Allawi's group, about the political and security collapse and the threat of Allawi's group exiting the government and the current political process. Here's the new part of what he reports:

And Najafi said the question of the Iraqi List staying in the current government is conditional on agreement to its demands, represented by: revision of the political process in its entirety, changing the method of administering the Iraqi state, freezing the constitution, and dissolving parliament. And he stressed that the decision to withdraw [in the event the demands aren't met] has been agreed to my most of the members of the Iraqi List.

The reporter also talked to Adnan Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accord Front, the biggest Sunni bloc in parliament, and here's how that went:

And the IAF, through its leader Adnan Dulaimi, said the group supports the creation of a new front to correct the course of the political process via redistribution of official appointments and the security ministries, in the event of failure of the international Baghdad Conference to cure the current situation.

So the Iraqi List appears to be talking about a "new front" that will demand freezing of the constitution and dissolving parliament as part of a "course-correction in the political process", otherwise they will bolt. The IAF leader talks about this "new front" idea as a "redistribution of official positions", and says it is something that should happen in the event that the Baghdad Conference (expected to be held in about a week, on March 10) doesn't solve anything. And the Allawi person, perhaps predictably, says Allawi is being given tacit US support by Khalilzad, in his current attempt to get the two big Kurdish parties to join in this.

Meanwhile, Maliki, for his part, in an AP interview, promises major changes in ministerial appointments and in law-enforcement policy before the Baghdad Conference. AP reports in detail on speculation what this could mean in terms of placating the Bush administration, cracking down on the Sadrists, and so on. By contrast, the Allawi project hasn't been mentioned anywhere in the Western press. It should be the Western media's motto: Exactly half of what you need to know.