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The US government on Tuesday pressed for the formation of a new Iraqi government as soon as possible and warned that “time is not on Iraq’s side”.
“It was important that Iraq’s new parliament convened today, as they pledged to do. That was a good thing. But we do hope that Iraq’s leaders will move forward with the extreme urgency that the current situation deserves”, State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
The new parliament convened for the first time on Tuesday. Despite calls for unity, lawmakers lost their tempers, and many Kurdish and Sunni deputies left and did not return, causing parliament to lose quorum.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraq to try and push Kurdish, Shi’ite and Sunni sides to fasten their process to fill the top three government posts – President, Prime Minister and Speaker.
“The fate of Iraq is very much hanging in the balance right now. Iraq’s leaders have a fundamental choice about the future of their country. Do they come together? Do they form a government? Do they say we are going to fight this threat together?” Harf said.
The new legislature will meet again on July 8th in Baghdad.
“It would have been better if they chose a speaker today. It would be better if they did it before the 8th. But we also understand this is a difficult process. It has a lot of moving parts”, Harf added.
She also disputed the notion that the US Secretary of State’s message to leaders in the autonomous region of Kurdistan and Baghdad will go unheeded.
“Democracy is messy at times”, Harf said, adding that the leaders of all three Muslim communities in Iraq, and vowed that they were committed to the democratic process in their talks with Kerry.
“We now need to see actions back up those words”, she added.