PARLIAMENT SESSION POSTPONED; NO VOTE ON MOD OR

C O N F I D E N T I A L BAGHDAD 001894 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/04/2016 TAGS: PGOV PNAT KDEM IZ SUBJECT: PARLIAMENT SESSION POSTPONED; NO VOTE ON MOD OR MOI NOMINEES Classified By: Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D) . ¶1. (U) Three hours after the scheduled session start time, Deputy Speaker Khalid Attiyah announced to the media June 4 the postponement of the Council of Representatives (CoR) session "until further notice" to "give the PM a greater chance to hold further consultations" on the candidates for the Ministries of Interior and Defense. (NOTE: The CoR Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani had left the Convention Center earlier in the day, reportedly for personal reasons. END NOTE.) The CoR was originally scheduled to convene at eleven o'clock to vote on the Prime Minister's nominees and later discuss their bylaws. ¶2. (C) While CoR members mingled in the cafeteria and the session room, PM Maliki huddled with other UIC leaders (including former PM Ibrahim al-Jafari, Hassan al-Shemmeri, and Baha al-Araji) and Tawafuq leaders VP Tariq al-Hashimi, Adnan Duleimi, and Khalaf Alayan in the PM's old Security and Defense Committee room. The Shia Coalition was unable to break its own internal deadlock on the UIC candidate for the Ministry of Interior, with SCIRI continuing to oppose the nomination of Farouq al-Araji. ¶3. (C) The PM met twice with the Ambassador. In the first meeting, he suggested that one way out of impasse would be to tell Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim that if they agreed to Al-Araji, he would consent to review his performance in three months and dismiss him if he could not do the job. The Ambassador agreed to call President Talabani to ask him to convey the compromise to al-Hakim. Talabani later informed the Ambassador that al-Hakim had not accepted the compromise. In the second meeting, Maliki told the Ambassador he was still prepared to go forward with the vote without the support of al-Hakim. ¶4. (C) Meanwhile members were already leaving (thereby depriving the CoR of quorum),in a move that the PM described as an ambush by SCIRI who were telling parliamentarians there would be no session. At that point, due to the lack of quorum, the session had to be formally postponed. ¶5. (C) Kurdish leadership present at the session did not intervene to mediate or broker a deal. After announcement of the delay, Deputy Speaker Arif Taifour told PolOff that he did not think there would be a session June 5, but added that the issue was between the Sunni Arabs and the Shia and did not involve the Kurds. ¶6. (C) The CoR did not convene June 5, and the leaders of all of the political blocs will meet the evening of June 5 to discuss the nominations. KHALILZAD