Iraq's Prime Minister Agrees to Renounce Power
by VOA News August 14, 2014
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has agreed to renounce power, saying he will give up his post to his replacement, moderate Shi'ite Haider al-Abadi.
Appearing on state television late Thursday flanked by Abadi and other Shi'ite politicians, Maliki said he was withdrawing his candidacy in favor of Abadi in order to 'ease the movement of the political process and the formation of the new government.'
Maliki had faced enormous pressure at home and abroad to step aside, dropping his bid for a third term as prime minister of Iraq and ending a legal challenge to Abadi's nomination by Iraqi President Fouad Massoum, which took place on Monday.
Abadi is a member of Maliki's Shi'ite Islamist Dawa party.
Maliki has been struggling for weeks to stay on as prime minister amid an attempt by opponents to push him out. They have accused him of monopolizing power and pursuing a narrowly pro-Shi'ite agenda that has alienated the Sunni minority.
Earlier Thursday, Sunni insurgents battled Iraqi troops in the city of Fallujah, with at least four children and a woman killed in the fighting, the Associated Press reported. The attack underscores the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country, which the United Nations on Wednesday labeled at its highest level of emergency.
That said, the situation has 'greatly improved' for Iraqi refugees who'd been stranded on a mountain in northeast Iraq, according to U.S. President Barack Obama, who said the United States would scale back efforts there and shift to providing more support for Iraqis battling Sunni insurgents of the Islamic State group elsewhere in the country.
U.S. airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops helped break the grave threat to the refugees on Mount Sinjar, the president said in a press briefing at a school cafeteria in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he is vacationing with his family.
'The situation on the mountain has greatly improved, and Americans should be very proud of their efforts,' he said.
A team of fewer than 20 U.S. military and civilian advisers who'd inspected the area Wednesday informed the president that many of the thousands of Yazidis fleeing Sunni extremists already had left the mountain and that those who remained were in satisfactory condition.
Of an estimated 4,500 people still on Sinjar, half are herders who intend to remain, the Associated Press reported earlier Thursday, citing two U.S. officials.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the herders had lived on Sinjar before the siege and were not interested in evacuating.
At the news briefing, Obama said that, given the progress, 'the bulk of military forces will be leaving in the coming days.' He praised U.S. troops for executing airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops 'almost flawlessly.'
But, the president said, 'the situation remains dire' in other Iraqi regions where the insurgents at times have overwhelmed Iraqi and Kurdish militia and terrorized civilians.
'We're going to be working with our international partners' to continue support for Iraqis, he said, again stressing that would be done without the use of ground combat troops.
The president, in his remarks, again called for the Iraqi people to unite to defeat the Islamic State forces.
'We are urging Iraqis to come together to turn the tide' against the Islamic State militant group by supporting the prime minister-designate, Haider al-Abadi, Obama said.
Humanitarian crisis
Attacks by Sunni militants since June have displaced thousands of minority Iraqi Christians and Yazidis as IS expands its self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.
Thursday's fighting in Fallujah took place only 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, west of Baghdad. The city has been under the militants' control since early this year.
On Wednesday, the United Nations declared a 'Level 3 emergency' in Iraq, a designation intended to speed 'additional resources in goods, funds and assets' for humanitarian aid, said Nicolay Mladenov, the U.N.'s special representative to Iraq.
The U.N. cited the 'growing needs' of tens of thousands of refugees evacuated from Sinjar Mountain and those of 12,000 displaced Iraqi Christians seeking refuge in the Kurdish capital of Irbil.
It said a total of 400,000 people had been displaced since June in the Dohuk governance in the north.
VOA's Victor Beattie contributed to this report, as did the Associated Press and Reuters news services.
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