Saudi initiative receives cool response in Iraq

Oct 31, 2010, 10:43 GMT

Baghdad - An initiative by Saudi King Abdullah to resolve the political impasse in Iraq was met with a cool response from politicians in the country Sunday.

The monarch invited leaders of the different blocs to meet in Riyadh after the Hajj pilgrimage ends late November in order to break a nearly eight-month deadlock on forming a new government.

Some groups said the offer, made on Saturday, was tantamount to

foreign interference in Iraq's political process.

'We respect such invitation by the Saudi monarch, but talks are continuing between the political blocs and there is an initiative by president of the Kurdistan region,' Kurdish politician Mahmoud Osman said.

'We want an internal Iraqi solution to the crisis,' Osman said.

A member of caretaker Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition said 'the initiative has come too late,' although he welcomed it as a form of support for the Iraqi people.

'The initiative will complicate the political scene and delay the process of forming a new government,' Hassan al-Saneed was quoted in press as saying.

Al-Saneed said lawmakers are now in talks to reconvene for a parliamentary session in the coming four days. Last week, Iraq's Supreme Court ordered the newly-elected parliament to reconvene.

Lawmakers have held only one session since the March 7 general elections, and that lasted just 20 minutes.

No single party won an outright majority in the election and attempts to realign parties and form new coalitions to secure a majority bloc have so far failed to produce a consensus for the top post of prime minister.

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