Al-Iraqiya Coalition: “PM Maliki’s insistence to cancel National Council for Strategic Policies reflects deepness of differences.”

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Member of al-Iraqiya Coalition, led by Iyad Allawi, Shaker Kitab, has stated on Saturday that the recent statement by Iraq ’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, calling for the cancellation of the National Council for Strategic Policies (NCSP), reflects deepness of differences between his State of Law and al-Iraqiya Coalitions.   “Maliki’s statement about possibility to abolish the NCSP reflects the deterioration of relations between his State of Law and al-Iraqiya Coalitions,” Kitab told IraqiNews.com news agency.   Kitab said: “We have been hopeful to reach a national partnership between us, but we had failed, because such statements reflect non-partnership and non-nationalistic relations between us.”   Kitab expressed regret for “non-arrival for the settlement of differences between the two Coalitions, reflected by the abolishment of agreements, reached between both sides in the past,” calling on the return of the dialogue table and the activation of the dialogue, before the escalation of the difference to a higher level than that of the current days.”   Iraq ’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had said in an interview with the semi-official al-Iraqiya Satellite TV Station on Friday that the National Council for Strategic Policies (NCSP) “is unconstitutional and can be abolished,” warning that voting on the NCSP “would change its Chairman into a Chairman of all State’s Chairmanships.”   “We won’t strive to cancel the NCSP, so long as we have agreed to form it, but there had been elements, who tried to add other authorities to its proposed authorities,” Maliki said.   As for Shaker Kitab, he said the NCSP “had been one of the proposals demanded by al-Iraqiya Coalition, as result to the last nationwide elections that took place in Iraq , after its failure to form the cabinet, despite winning the largest number of Parliament’s seats.”   The differences between the State of Law Coalition , led by Nouri al-Maliki, and al-Iraqiya Coalition, led by Iyad Allawi, are based on Arbil Agreement, most outstanding points of which had been the formation of the NCSP and the mechanism of the assignment of its Chairman.   SKH (FT)