Egypt: Sisi Offers to Broker Iraq ‘Compromise’

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi is prepared to broker a “compromise” among Iraq’s rival political parties, Egyptian Foreign Minister Samih Shukri has said.

Shukri, who met with senior Iraqi officials including Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday, said Sisi offered “to meet with all the Iraqi political sides and reach a compromise to settle the Iraqi crisis.”

Shukri said Egypt supports a unity government in Iraq that can battle terrorism and diminish sectarianism. Maliki, who runs a Shia-dominated administration, has rejected the idea of a power-sharing government that would include rival parties, a move that further alienated Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari boycotted his position on Friday, and he was promptly replaced by Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussein al-Shahristani. Zebari was among the Kurdish ministers who refused to attend Maliki’s cabinet meetings after the embattled prime minister accused the Kurdistan Region of harboring terrorists. 

In a joint press conference with Shukri, Shahristani maintained that the “recent incidents in Iraq had no impact on the country's reconstruction and oil exports" and called on Arab-majority countries to fight terrorism jointly. 

Shukri’s visit to Baghdad followed Sisi’s warning on July 6 that a Kurdish referendum on self-determination “is in reality no more than the start of a catastrophic division of Iraq into smaller rival states.” 

Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani has asked the regional parliament to prepare a public referendum on whether Iraqi Kurdistan should become its own nation.