Washington pressuring Iraqi parties to ‘quickly’ form a gov’t: top US official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States is pressuring all Iraqi political parties to form a government, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Joey Hood told Rudaw on Thursday. 

Iraq held parliamentary elections on October 10 but the parliamentary blocs have so far failed to agree on candidates for the president and prime minister positions. Although talks are ongoing, there is no progress.  

“The United States and our partners, certainly, we were not silent in the preparations for the elections. That’s why we allocated $10 million to support the UN mission and five million dollars more to support monitoring teams. And that encouraged other countries to do the same. And so the result was the most technically sound and secure elections that Iraq has ever had. So it should not be a surprise that the results were very different than what you have seen in previous elections,” Hood told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin. 

“Now, it is the time for a government to be formed that reflects the will of the Iraqi voter. That’s obviously not happening yet and the United States is pressing all parties to quickly agree to a government so that the government can start providing better services to its people - that’s what they were elected for,” he added. 

Regarding Erbil-Baghdad oil and gas disputes, Hood said that both sides have to find a solution.  

“We were encouraged to see the two sides sitting down and starting a dialogue, and we encourage that because we believe that they can and they must come up with a solution that is acceptable to all parties,” he said.

“This is important not just for the Iraqi Kurdistan Region or the other parts of Iraq, but also for world energy markets. As you know, because of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, now world energy markets are suffering, food security is suffering and so we need to make sure that markets are as fully-supplied as possible,” added the US official. 

Hood discussed the political process in Iraq with Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani and PM Masrour Barzani in Erbil on Wednesday.