Iraq's Assembly Opens Next Week

Via the Iraq Election Discussions blog, here is a report about Iraq's National Assembly going to be opened next week:

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s new 275-member national assembly will hold its first session next week with or without an agreement on the lineup of the country's next government, a Shiite official revealed.

"The plan is to open the national assembly next week," between March 6 and 10, said Jawad al-Maliky, deputy to the front-running Shiite candidate for prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari.

"We will open the parliament whether or not there is an agreement," said Maliky, who is Jaafari's number two in the fundamentalist Shiite Dawa party and deputy speaker of the current interim parliament.

"We want to reach an understanding before the parliament and when we convene we want to have reached an understanding about the government and the ministries," he added.

The reason for this opening?

A Western official based in Baghdad told AFP that Maliky's announcement of an opening date for parliament was a pressure tactic to force the Kurds to agree to join a governing coalition.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Both the UIA and the Kurds have presented unreasonable demands, so it may take a while for them to work on a compromise.