U.S. Peace Group Meets With Iraqi Political Leaders

By Julianne LaJeunesse – Talk Radio News Service

A federally-funded U.S. peace group met with two Iraqi leaders Friday to talk about the country’s current stability and what the United States might expect from January’s parliament elections.

Iraqi political leaders Ayad Allawi and Saleh Muhamed al-Mutlaq spoke with the United States Institute of Peace, or USIP warning that Iraq cannot afford to be left on their own during a time when “political corruption is obvious.” Mutlaq, a secular Sunni politician told guests at the conference, “If they go on like this, I think Iraq is going to face a problem.”

“We have to admit that the stability that we are talking about, and the security that we are talking about is for a short time and it is fragile,” Mutlaq said. “We have a neighbor who is training militias there and waiting for the time when the Americans leave Iraq…They said ‘we will fill the vacuum’.”

That neighbor is Iran. In 2007, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech that U.S. political power in Iraq was collapsing and that: “Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation.”

Mutlaq, like former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, stressed that over the next few months, Iraq is going to need U.S. and international help as the country votes for their second national parliament since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Mutlaq heads the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, which is a group of individuals who contest the December 2005 general elections in Iraq. He said ensuring security during the January 2010 elections is essential to the nation’s progress. Allawi agreed, saying he hopes the next trip to the polls will be “fraud-free, will have integrity and be free of intimidation, and free of rigging the ballot boxes.”

“Our aspiration, really, is to build a country by Iraqis, for all Iraqis, excluding terrorists and extremists and those who have stained their hands with the blood of the Iraqi people,” said Allawi, who helped manage Iraq’s January 2005 elections.

“This is what we aspire [to], and this is where we need the understanding of the international community… it is a known fact, in the Middle East, the greater Middle East, a stable Iraq would spill over stability throughout the region, and vice-versa is also correct,” he said.

The discussion was an addition to Ayad Allawi and Saleh Muhamed al-Mutlaq’s “to do list” while in the country. The two met with Congress on Thursday to address the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA agreement, and to advocate for Iraqi exemption to U.N. Security Charter 7, which among other conditions, requires Iraq to pay reparations to Kuwait.