Whoever is nominated from the two Kurdish parties still needs the approval from the Shia and Sunni blocs in the parliament.
Iraq’s parliament has postponed the election for the country’s next president to allow for more consultations between the two Kurdish parties to agree on a candidate.
The Iraqi News Agency (INA) said the parliamentary vote scheduled for Tuesday was delayed at the request of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
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Iraq follows a sectarian quota system, according to which the post of the prime minister goes to a Shia, the parliament’s speaker is a Sunni, and the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.
Usually, in an agreement between the two main Kurdish parties, a PUK member holds the presidency. In contrast, the president and regional leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region are selected from the KDP.
However, in this instance, the KDP announced its own candidate, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, for the election.
Reporting from the capital, Baghdad, media’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said whoever is nominated from the two Kurdish parties still needs the approval from the Shia and Sunni blocs in the parliament.
After the election, the new president will have 15 days to appoint a prime minister, who is widely expected to be the former leader, Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki, 75, has already served as Iraq’s prime minister for two terms from 2006 to 2014 before he quit under pressure from the United States. He is seen as being close to Iran.
On Saturday, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shia parties which holds a parliamentary majority, endorsed Maliki. The next day, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned against a pro-Iranian government in Iraq.
An Iraqi source close to the Coordination Framework told the AFP news agency that Washington had conveyed to it that it “holds a negative view of previous governments led by former Prime Minister Maliki”.
In a letter, US representatives said that while the selection of the prime minister is an Iraqi decision, “the United States will make its own sovereign decisions regarding the next government in line with American interests”.
Another Iraqi source confirmed the letter, adding that the Shia alliance had still moved forward with its choice, confident that Maliki could allay Washington’s concerns.
Iraq has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, with successive governments negotiating a delicate balance between the two foes.
