Sulaiman al-Jumaili, head of al-Iraqia parliamentary faction speaks about Maliki government’s relations with the Iranian regime and the issue of Camp Ashraf

In an interview with al-Sharqia Television, Sulaiman al-Jumaili, head of al-Iraqia parliamentary faction, the winning coalition in the elections and the largest faction in the Iraqi parliament, answered questions regarding Iraq’s political and security conditions, Maliki government’s relations with the Iranian regime, and the issue of Camp Ashraf. Excerpts from that interview are presented here.



Al-Sharqia: President Talebani announced closing of Camp Ashraf from Tehran. How do you interpret this?
Al-Jumaili: There are certain political sides in Iraq that have certain relations with neighboring countries and are definitely affected by these relations, and for them, their party’s interests have much higher priority than Iraq’s vital national interests. I believe that in Iraq’s foreign policy, relations must rise from Iraq’s high interests and not from the political relations of certain parties with this or that side.
Al-Sharqia: In your previous statements, you identified Government of Law’s List [Maliki’s group] to be responsible for the failure of talks in both service and security issues with more emphasis on the security issues.
Al-Jumaili: I believe today, the security dossier is one that has the most retrogress in Iraq. Today, the phenomenon of assassinations by guns equipped with silencers has become almost a daily affair, and thus far, no one has made any efforts, or even attempted to discover who is behind these assassinations. This is neither reasonable nor right for the assassinations to continue for months and officers, officials, senior executives and physicians be assassinated daily and government security bodies, with all their might that they claim they have, not be able to stop them. I believe there exists a dangerous backward move in the area of security and this is quite disturbing. Sometimes, in face to face armed confrontations between two sides, it is possible for our forces and the police and security forces to do something, but in an issue like these highly sophisticated operations, we witness many failures in the security bodies.