Iraq Speaker: Iraq has 'just months' to avert collapse
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's leaders have just months to mend their differences or see their country collapse, the speaker of parliament told wrangling deputies on Wednesday after a car bomb caused dozens of casualties in the morning rush hour.
Ethnic Kurds in the chamber demanded a new national flag to end a row over the Saddam-era version that has raised talk of Kurdish secession. But some members complained parliament's agenda, on its first full session after a summer recess, failed to address urgent issues that may affect the nation's survival.
Silencing one angry dissenter, Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani told the assembly: "Let's start talking the same language.
"We have three to four months to reconcile with each other," Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, said of a national reconciliation aimed at averting ethnic and sectarian civil war.
"If the country doesn't survive this, it will go under."
Read the rest at Swiss Info
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's leaders have just months to mend their differences or see their country collapse, the speaker of parliament told wrangling deputies on Wednesday after a car bomb caused dozens of casualties in the morning rush hour.
Ethnic Kurds in the chamber demanded a new national flag to end a row over the Saddam-era version that has raised talk of Kurdish secession. But some members complained parliament's agenda, on its first full session after a summer recess, failed to address urgent issues that may affect the nation's survival.
Silencing one angry dissenter, Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani told the assembly: "Let's start talking the same language.
"We have three to four months to reconcile with each other," Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, said of a national reconciliation aimed at averting ethnic and sectarian civil war.
"If the country doesn't survive this, it will go under."
Read the rest at Swiss Info
posted by iraqnam at 2:41 PM
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