Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammed Al-Halbousi on Sunday called on the parliamentary blocs to hold new rounds of dialogue to agree on various issues, including early elections.
“The agenda of the upcoming national dialogue rounds must include several issues that must be agreed upon, including setting a date for early parliamentary and provincial council elections no later than the end of 2023,” Al-Halbousi said in a statement.
Al-Halbousi called for discussing the election of the president of the republic, the formation of a government with full powers, the adoption of the annual federal budget, in addition to the amendment of several vital laws.
He also called for discussing the immediate return of the displaced to their homes, as well as the relations between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.
The call came one day after Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi urged the country’s political parties to hold a new round of national dialogue on Monday to resolve Iraq’s months-long political crisis.
In August, Iraqi political parties held a round of dialogue at the invitation of al-Kadhimi to find a way out of the stifling crisis in the country, but prominent Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr did not attend the dialogue meeting.
Political tensions in Iraq have escalated in the past weeks between Al-Sadr and his rivals in the Shiite Coordination Framework.
Source: Agencies
