Shafaq News/ On Wednesday evening, Barzani’s headquarters issued a clarification regarding the position of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani regarding the formation of the next government.
In a statement to his headquarters received by Shafaq News Agency, a number of media outlets published that (Kurdistan Democratic Party Chairman) Masoud Barzani had more than one different message that he conveyed to the leaders of the coordination framework regarding the political process and the candidates to head the next Iraqi government.
The statement added that he announces to the public opinion that these news is far from the truth and has no basis, stressing that in the political process in Iraq and the next government, the names of people and parties are not important for President Barzani, but rather is the implementation of the constitution and that the program of the next government be in accordance with the three principles balance, harmony and partnership,
Since the Sadrist bloc’s representatives submitted their resignations from the Iraqi Council of Representatives and the withdrawal of the Sadrist movement’s leader Muqtada al-Sadr from the political process, the coordinating framework has addressed the task of forming the new government and entered into internal negotiations and dialogues with other political forces, but until now it has not been officially announced that understandings have been reached between the two parties. The blocs lead to the formation of the government.
3,219 Policy 2022/07/06 20:21 Baghdad today – Baghdad The leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Abd al-Salam Barwari, called for holding a session to elect the president of the republic, indicating that the candidate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Barham Salih, has greater chances than our candidate Riber Ahmed in Parliament. Berwari said in an interview with (Baghdad Today) that “Barham Salih’s chances are greater than our candidate, but we do not mind the nomination of the two figures in Parliament.”
He added, “The Democrat was the first to bless the election of Barham Salih, his victory in 2018, and he is still in the same sporting spirit.”
He continued, “There are 31 candidates for the presidency of the republic. If one of the candidates does not obtain two-thirds of the council members in the first round, there will be competition in the second round between the two higher ones.
Shafaq News/ Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is not a stranger to Iraq or to the affairs of the region, and his positions can be traced since his support for former US President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, and his joy at the arrest of Saddam Hussein, all the way to his visit now to Baghdad and Erbil, where he stressed the aspiration of the states The United Nations aims to make Iraq a major player in the Middle East.
And it is not just a coincidence that Graham, before his meetings with the leaders of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, including the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi, the President of the Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, the Iraqi President Barham Salih and Parliament Speaker Muhammad Al-Halbousi, inspected the American forces stationed in Iraq and tweeted on “Twitter” with a picture of him surrounded To the American soldiers, he wished a happy American Independence Day on the 4th of July, and thanked them and American diplomats for their work to “protect and secure American interests around the world.”
On his official website, Graham defines himself as “a fighter who does not hold back against a challenge, a conservative who gets things done, a leader who puts our country above all others, a great friend of our men and women who serve in uniform, and a respected voice on national security issues.”
But these positive descriptions do not mean that Graham, who has been a senator from South Carolina for many years, and previously worked as a lawyer in the field of law before he stormed the political arenas, has a clear vision of what is going on in the region and the world, but rather to follow his positions, which he sometimes acts as. A global senator”, often reflects incomprehensible fluctuations, and sometimes a departure from the norm in political work, such as his recent call for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Sometimes he attacks Iran and urges it to “break its back”, then calls for dialogue with it, and sometimes it attacks Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and leads bills to punish, isolate and denounce it, then goes out calling for understanding with it and taking its concerns and interests into account. Donald Trump is competing for the Republican Party’s nomination, then withdraws and warns Americans not to vote for him, and then converge with him while he is in the White House and they play golf together, and now urges him to re-nominate himself for the US presidential elections in 2024.
Graham was also a military man who served in the armed forces, and for years he was stationed at American bases in Europe, and for this he always shows a prominent interest in American forces abroad, and his visits to them, including in Iraq, Syria and others, and he worked on congressional committees related to military affairs, and often He makes his say on foreign policy issues, gets hit several times, and blunders many times.
While he considers himself a bearer of the ideas of “Reagan Republicans”, that is, former US President Ronald Reagan, and presents himself as a “conservative” and sharply opposes the left and liberal ideas, but at the same time, he is considered among the most cooperative members of the Senate with the partisan vote Between Democrats and Republicans, he may have reinforced the image around him that he is “volatile”, or perhaps this is what the Machiavellian demands of political action, where there are no constants but interests.
For example, in June 2014, with the escalation and emergence of the threat of ISIS in Iraq, Graham urged Washington to hold direct talks with Iran on Iraq, arguing that Washington needed Iran’s participation to prevent the collapse of the Iraqi government. Graham said, despite his extremist positions on Iran, that the step of American negotiations with Tehran is certainly unattractive, but it is inevitable, explaining that for the Iranians, they have an interest in that, they want to protect the Shiites, and therefore we need to talk to them in some way to establish stability in Iraq, and in order to ensure that Iran does not take advantage of the situation to occupy Iraqi lands.
Graham himself had issued a statement on December 14, 2003, in which he welcomed the arrest of Saddam Hussein in preparation for his accountability, considering that the greatest victor is the Iraqi people. His statement had a distinct moral aspect when he said that “the arrest of Saddam will lead to many breakthroughs in the reconstruction of Iraq, and it will be a truly tragedy if the governments that lent the money to Saddam now insist that the Iraqi people pay the debts of their oppressor… that any country insists on paying the debts of the people.” The Iraqi bears his persecution, for he has trained him morally.”
On the other hand, Graham, in June 2021, criticized the Joe Biden administration’s openness to negotiation with Iran, saying that Tehran “manipulates him and seeks to turn the world into a hostage to it” by obtaining a nuclear bomb. That’s when he said in an interview with the US “Fox News” channel that the Iranian regime is similar to the German Nazi regime, as the former was motivated by religious superiority, and the second was driven by ethnic superiority.
In highlighting his hard-line positions on Iran, in 2019, he proposed that the Trump administration destroy Iranian oil refineries, with the aim of “breaking the back of the regime.”
Similar to his Iranian changes, Graham has also interesting changes around Turkey and Erdogan himself, sometimes over a similar period of time. For example, in October 2019, he made a move in Congress to introduce economic sanctions against Turkey against the backdrop of Erdogan’s announcement of the start of the “Spring of Peace” operation. Commenting on Trump’s decision to withdraw the US military force from northern Syria, he said three months later, he was on a visit to Ankara, “I told Trump that if we withdrew and did not do it correctly, we would have created a nightmare for Turkey.. (Former President Barack) Obama has created a nightmare for Turkey by arming the Syrian Democratic Forces, and Trump should be careful in withdrawing, and not leave this problem in Turkey’s arms.
Although Graham has repeatedly stressed the importance of protecting and continuing US support for the Kurdish “partners” in the fight against ISIS and terrorism, he told “Fox News”, that Turkey “will be forced to purge the armed terrorist elements in Syria. Some of these elements are from groups.” Which we are arming!
Also, while Graham was raising his voice loudly against Trump’s decision to withdraw the American force from the east of the Euphrates, considering that this means abandoning the Kurds and allowing Turkey to attack them, however, on October 20, 2019, he retracted his opposition and said that he is increasingly optimistic that this decision enhances the possibility of Obtaining historical solutions in Syria.
Graham was also an American opponent of the decision to withdraw the military from Afghanistan, which was taken in the first place by his “friend” Trump. In June, before the full US military withdrawal from this country became clear, Graham said, “It seems that the Biden administration is very stubborn to change course and has learned nothing from the withdrawal from Iraq and other bad adventures. As you can see in real time another chapter is being written in a book Joe Biden on the disasters of foreign policy…a very sad and dangerous chapter.”
Among his most prominent controversial positions in the recent period, Graham called in his tweet on Twitter in the second week of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for the assassination of Putin, when he said, “It is clear that the world will be a better place if there is a regime change in Russia … Putin is a war criminal, he must go into the hands of the Russian people, by any means possible.”
The US senator asked, “Is there Brutus in Russia? Is there a colonel in the Russian army more successful than Stauffenberg? It’s the only way it will end, and someone in Russia will finish this man… You will do your country and the world a wonderful service,” noting Thus, to Brutus, who killed the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar in the year 44 BC, and to the Nazi colonel Klaus Stauffenberg, who tried to assassinate the Nazi leader Hitler in the year 1944.
Graham prefers to describe himself as “independent” while more hard-line conservatives criticize him as a “moderate Republican”, but he certainly considers himself a “Reagan Republican”, or a Republican with a “touch of moderation”.
In the context of these gray, opaque spaces in his career, Graham becomes available for the pleasure of navigating between positions and policies as required by his momentary vision or the overlapping interests behind the scenes of policy makers in Congress and the White House. But it is sometimes shocking: Although he is a senator representing the American electorate and a descendant of the legal work, he supported wiretapping of Americans in the post-9/11 era. He also supported the arbitrary arrests of security suspects, as the United States had done during World War II against Japanese and German residents.
But he is also a constant observer of political shifts outside the United States and behaves like a “global senator.” And now, while Iraq faces the intertwined political challenge after the Sadrists’ decision to withdraw from efforts to form a government and leave parliament, it lands in Iraq, moving between Baghdad and Erbil. On Tuesday, he was received by the President of the region, Nechirvan Barzani, in the presence of the US ambassador, Alina Romanowski, the commander of the international coalition forces, General John Brennan, and a number of diplomats and senior US officers.
According to a statement issued by the Presidency of the Region, the meeting dealt with the situation in Iraq and the political process in the country, the latest developments in the war on terrorism, Erbil-Baghdad relations, dialogue to solve problems between them, the situation in Syria and the Kurdish issue in it.
The statement stated that the two sides stressed the importance of maintaining security and stability in the region and agreed that the threat of terrorism and the re-emergence of ISIS is a real threat to the security and stability of Iraq and Syria.
President Nechirvan Barzani stressed that the key to stability and solving Iraq’s problems is solving the problems of Erbil-Baghdad through dialogue and in accordance with the constitution.
Al-Kazemi also received the American senator, and the talks dealt with the new phase of security cooperation in the field of advice and capacity building for the Iraqi security forces after the end of the combat role of the American forces, as well as discussing the regional situation in general and the situation in Syria in particular, and what Iraq can contribute to achieving regional stability. In light of his growing role in this field.
Graham stressed the unlimited commitment to providing long-term assistance to Iraq, and enabling it to achieve its security, economic, and social priorities, explaining that the United States aspires for Iraq to be a major player in the Middle East, based on its strong democracy and economic reforms as a supportive factor for regional and international stability.
Shafaq News/ The Kurdistan Regional Government announced, on Wednesday, the suspension of official working hours in government departments and institutions next week on the occasion of Eid al-Adha.
“On the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Kurdistan Regional Government decided to suspend official working hours in all its institutions from Saturday, the ninth of July, until Thursday, 14 of the same month,” said Jutiar, a spokesman for the regional government, in a statement received by Shafaq News Agency.
The spokesman excluded the exams for the 12th preparatory class (sixth middle school) from the holiday, and said that the exams would be according to their prepared schedules.
On Saturday, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi, directed the suspension of official working hours in all government departments and institutions next week on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha holiday.
Baghdad – Mawazine News , Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi discussed with the head of the Al-Fateh Alliance Hadi al-Amiri, on Wednesday, the political developments and the completion of the constitutional entitlements.
The Parliament Speaker’s office said in a statement received by Mawazine News that “the Speaker of Parliament, Muhammad al-Halbousi, received the head of the Al-Fateh Alliance, Hadi al-Amiri.”
According to the statement, the meeting discussed the “developments of the political situation in the country, and the completion of the constitutional obligations.” Ended
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