Iraq's new parliament was sworn in today:
Adnan Pachachi, the senior politician who administered the oath in the absence of a speaker, spoke of a country in crisis.
"We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people," Pachachi told lawmakers. "The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq."
This is a very important event and it is too bad that the main stream media plays it down by focusing on the fact that the Iraqi factions are deadlocked over the formation of a government.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius, in Baghdad, writes Iraq's political leaders are taking the first tentative steps toward forming a broad government of national unity that could reverse the country's downward slide."
According to Ignatius, progress is being made in a series of meetings proposed a week ago by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad that have included all of the Iraq's major political factions. Khalilzad has attended these meeting playing a role like that of a mediator in a labor dispute:
Khalilzad told me in an interview in his office after Wednesday's session that the talks had produced tentative agreement on two basic points: First, the parties endorsed the idea of a unity government that would include all the major factions. Second, they agreed that this government should have a top-level "national security commission" that would include representatives of all the major political parties. Operating by consensus, this body would frame the broad outlines of policy, subject to the Iraqi constitution.
This week's dialogue broke the deadlock over the composition of the coalition. A month ago, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was refusing to endorse any government that included the party of Ayad Allawi, a close ally of the United States who, as interim prime minister, had ordered a military strike against Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. Khalilzad said Wednesday that the logjam was broken "because people realized that if one side has red lines, all sides will have red lines." He said of this week's gatherings: "These are the best meetings of Iraqis I've seen since I've been here."
The U.S. ambassador's upbeat account is believable because it is echoed by Iraqi political leaders. Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's vice president and a representative of Hakim and his powerful Shiite party known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told me Wednesday: "We have a common understanding on major issues -- on the need for consensus and on a national security commission. What makes me confident is that I think we are building up a sense of understanding among different communities." He said the message of the new government must be: "No one is outside of the law, whether the Badr Organization [the Supreme Council's militia], the Mahdi Army or the insurgency."
Ignatius also reports one obstacle has been fear about the role of .:
To finesse that issue, Hakim said he is urging to talk with the United States about Iraq's political future. Khalilzad himself has been quietly exploring what he calls the "modalities" for such U.S.- talks on Iraq.
It seems more than a coincidence that today said it ready for talks with U.S. about Iraq. According to the Associated Press, this is a major shift in ian foreign policy. And now the U.S. says it is prepared to talk with about Iraq.
There is cause for more optimism about Iraq than we see from the Democrats or the main stream media.
UPDATE: At Rantingprofs, Cori Dauber wonders why we get better fact reporting from columnists than reporters. At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner notes that the Iraqi effort to form a unity government is a difficult balancing act being attempted by people with no experience with representative government. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media fails to grasp this obvious fact.
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