Dubai: On the second leg of his four-nation tour, Nouri Al Maliki, Iraqi Prime Minister, on Monday met Iranian officials to seek their support to form a new government.
Al Maliki's visit to Tehran was crowned with a special meeting with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who attacked the US occupation in Iraq and described it as the root of all the problems facing the neighbouring nation.
Al Maliki's trip and his plan to visit the religious shrine of Qom on Tuesday annoyed Eyad Allawi, chief of Iraqiya, who won the election with a slight margin over Al Maliki's State of Law.
Allawi seemed to have realised that he had lost hope of forming the government. He accused Iran of meddling in Iraq's political affairs by bribing other Shiite groups to support the alliance of Al Maliki in Parliament. He said the US also seems to have lifted its veto against Iran's political manipulation of political blocs and would not mind having a government blessed by Iran.
"We know that unfortunately Iran is trying to wreak havoc in the region, and trying to destabilise the region by destabilising Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian issue," Allawi told CNN on Sunday.
"And this is where unfortunately Iraq and the rest of the greater Mideast is falling victim to these terrorists who are definitely Iran-financed and supported by various governments in the region." Allawi's Iraqiya bloc controls 91 of the 325 seats in the Iraqi parliament, two more than Al Maliki's State of Law alliance.
Tehran's envoy to Baghdad Hassan Danaeifar dismissed Allawi's accusations."These comments are not true. He makes such remarks on the threshold of trips [of Al Maliki] to other nations, and they are baseless," he was quoted as saying by Iran's Fars news agency.
Exchanging views
"These comments are old and these friends have made them so many times that nobody listens."
He backed Al Maliki's visit to Tehran, saying it was aimed at "consulting and exchanging views with influential regional and neighbouring nations".
Al Maliki visited Iran's ally Syria last Wednesday and plans to tour several Gulf Arab states where support for his rival has been strong, a close aide told AFP on Saturday.Iranian state television's Arabic-language Al Alam channel said the premier also intends to visit regional heavyweights Egypt and Turkey after his Tehran visit.
Allawi has himself been trying to secure regional support with visits not only to Saudi Arabia but also to Damascus and Beirut in the past few months.
London's The Guardian newspaper meanwhile reported that Iran has brokered a critical deal with regional neighbours to install a pro-Tehran government in Iraq.
It said Iran was instrumental in forming the alliance between Al Maliki and Iraq's powerful radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr who reportedly is studying in Iran, a move seen boosting Al Maliki's bid for the premiership.
Al Maliki's aide in Baghdad and the spokesman of the government, Ali Al Dabbagh, told Gulf News that Al Maliki's tour will also take him to Egypt and Turkey. During his short visit to Amman, he promised the Jordanian officials to promote the much-needed economic relations with the kingdom if he formed the new government.
Al Dabbagh said Al Maliki received an invitation to visit Qatar but he did not confirm the visit to any of the six Gulf countries which are believed to support Allawi.
A source from Allawi's bloc told Gulf News it seems that Al Maliki managed to bribe each of Iraq's neighbours with what is required from Iraq. Syria will be the main corridor of the new pipeline for oil exports to the Mediterranean Sea, while fostering alliances with political blocs supported by Iran like Sadrists.
