Al-Maliki opponents walk out of parliament

BAGHDAD – Just a day after cutting a deal to end a lengthy impasse, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s main political rivals walked out of parliament Thursday, illustrating the perils of building a government despite a near-complete absence of trust.

Sandwiched around the walkout by Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc, parliament elected a speaker and gave a second term to President Jalal Talabani – who formally asked al-Maliki to put together a new government. And despite the red faces and bluster, some members expressed confidence that the tempers would be cool enough by Saturday to allow legislators to meet again.

But experts said they could well explode later if security unravels in Iraq, and politicians repeatedly collide over the power-sharing agreements they reached in principle.

“That’s why I call it a delicate balance. A lot could go wrong,” said former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, commenting on the difficulty of cooperation among Shiite religious parties, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs.

The walkout by the largely Sunni-backed Iraqiya left a collection of mostly Shiite religious parties and Kurds to vote for Talabani, who is a Kurd, a reminder of the two groups’ dominance of Iraqi politics since 2003. Disenchantment by Sunnis helped fuel the insurgency that was responsible for much of the violence as Iraq descended into civil war after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Iraqiya’s move followed a heated argument over the status of four politicians who were blocked from running for parliament last March, allegedly because they were high-ranking members of Hussein’s Baath Party.

Earlier Thursday, al-Maliki, Allawi and Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani signed an agreement to lift the ban on the four Iraqiya politicians, including two of the bloc’s leaders – Salah Mutlaq and Jamal Karbouli. But when Iraqiya moved to discuss the matter in parliament before the vote on the presidency, al-Maliki’s backers refused.