BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a member of Iraq’s Shi’ite Arab majority, has called for a reduction in power-sharing pacts that have given minority Sunnis and Kurds a greater political voice since 2003.
Maliki said continuing indefinitely with the agreements, which have provided a degree of consensus in a country battling to contain sectarian violence, would lead to “catastrophe” and that Iraq needed to embrace majority rule.
His comments were likely to fuel suspicions of Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, and Kurds, who have their own semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, that minority groups could be subject to majority Shi’ite tyranny.
“In the beginning, consensus was necessary for us. In this last period, we all embraced consensus and everyone took part together. We needed calm between all sides and political actors,” Maliki said in an interview late on Thursday with al-Hurra, a U.S.-backed television station.
“But if this continues it will become a problem, a flaw, a catastrophe. The alternative is democracy, and that means majority rule … From now on I call for an end to that degree of consensus,” Maliki said.
