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by **TLF** Tue May 14, 2013 7:50 pm

Allawi: Demonstrations Won’t Stop Unless Maliki Resigns

Posted on 14 May 2013. Tags: Ayad Allawi, elections, Iyad Allawi, Maliki, Nouri al-Maliki

Pages: 1 2 3

By Ali Abel Sadah for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Iraqiya List leader and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said that
the protests in the Iraq provinces that are home to a Sunni majority
won’t stop unless Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government resigns,
thus paving a way for a reduced government to be formed to organize
early general elections in which its members cannot participate.

During a meeting with a number of Iraqi journalists at his house in
the upscale neighborhood of Harthiya in Baghdad, Allawi said, “Maliki
did not listen to our advice concerning the need to heed the demands of
the demonstrators and attempt to implement as many as possible.” He
pointed out that Maliki “went in the opposite direction and described
the protesters as terrorists and Baathists.”

Allawi, a secular politician of Shiite roots, heads a list led by
mostly Sunni politicians. In 2004, he served as head of the government
in the framework of an agreement sponsored by the United States.

“Maliki told us that he has to listen to and contain demonstrators,
but instead he described them as terrorists and Baathists, and he even
attacked the demonstration squares with arms,” Allawi said.

Allawi believes that the demonstrations will not stop “as long as
Maliki is in power.” He said, “The government should resign in order to
form a reduced government that can oversee early elections without
allowing its members to participate in these elections,” adding, “The
second track of the solution may be the return to the Erbil Agreement
and the achievement of a prompt partnership.”