Iran, a key ally of Iraq’s sidelined Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said Tuesday it backed the legal process to pick his replacement, following the nomination of Haidar al-Abadi as new head of government, Agence France-Presse reported.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary and representative of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, made the remarks at a meeting of Iranian ambassadors in Tehran, the Fars and Mehr news agencies said.
“The framework provided by the Iraqi constitution stipulates that the prime minister has been chosen by the majority group in the parliament,” Shamkhani said.
The statement was the first official signal that Maliki no longer enjoys the support of his fellow Shiite leaders and politicians in Tehran to stay on as head of government in Baghdad.
Iranian officials had said recently that Iran believed Maliki was no longer able to hold his country together and that it was looking for an alternative leader to combat a Sunni Islamist insurgency.
Inclusive government
Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged al-Abadi to quickly form an inclusive government, while ruling out sending U.S. combat troops to the country.
“We are urging him to form a new cabinet as swiftly as possible and the US stands ready to support a new and inclusive Iraqi government and particularly its fight against ISIS,” he said.
“There will be no reintroduction of American combat forces into Iraq. This is a fight that Iraqis need to join on behalf of Iraq,” he added.
Kerry’s comments in Sydney follow a statement from President Barack Obama that Iraq had taken “a promising step forward” in designating Haider al-Abadi as its new prime minister.
The Secretary of State also said that the United States and Australia agreed to take concerns about the threat posed by militant foreign fighters in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to the United Nations.
“We intend to join together in order to bring this to the United Nations meeting this month and put it on the agenda in a way that will elicit support from the source countries as well as those countries of concern,” Kerry said after joint security talks.
The issue of foreigners traveling to conflicts to join militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was discussed between U.S. and Australian officials in Sydney, spurred by images of a Sydney-raised boy holding the severed head of soldier in Syria.
Kerry said Australia and the U.S. had agreed to “work together to assemble a compendium of the best practices in the world together regarding those foreign fighters”.
EU meeting on Iraq
Meanwhile, France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said his European colleagues should be recalled from their holidays for an urgent meeting about delivering arms to Kurds fighting Islamic extremists in Iraq.
“I have asked (EU foreign affairs supremo Catherine) Ashton to bring together the (EU) foreign affairs council as quickly as possible so we can take decisions on this matter,” Fabius told French radio.
“There is still no date and I ask again that this be done urgently,” he said.
“I know that in the West, we are in the holiday period but when there are people dying … you have to come back from your holidays,” he stressed.
