Word: parliament
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...SOFA, passed by Maliki's cabinet last weekend, needs to be approved by the 275-member parliament. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most important Shi'ite cleric, has said any deal with the U.S. must be passed by a big majority in order to be truly legitimate in the eyes of the people. That seems unlikely. If the Sunni-Sadrist-secular alliance can break off a few MPs from Maliki's own Shi'ite-Kurdish block, they may even be able to defeat the proposition...
...about to unravel, fired broadsides in all directions. At a press conference, he lambasted naysayers as political opportunists who were trying to hold his government for ransom, in effect working against the national interest. His anger was directed not only at the Sunni, Sadrist and secular blocks in parliament, which have formed a loose coalition to oppose the SOFA; he also took an unrelated sideswipe at Kurdish politicians, without whose help he cannot hope to have the agreement ratified...
...atmosphere is part family reunion, part political convention. And for the first time, this group of exiles is connecting in an organized way with Tibetans inside Tibet. The parliament, working through unspecified means, compiled 17,000 individual suggestions for the delegates from people inside Tibet. About 8,000 of them simply stated support for whatever the Dalai Lama decides, but 5,000 were in favor of independence. There was also a public film screening Thursday evening of secretly recorded interviews with 108 Tibetans from inside Tibet. Those views could have a significant influence on the direction of the movement...
Maliki's government is bracing for the worst. Spokesman Ali Dabbagh told TIME that if the parliament fails to ratify the agreement, the government will ask the U.N. to extend the mandate but allow for the possibility that it may last months rather than an entire year. A vote on the agreement is due on Monday, but more disruptions are likely. Al-Sadr has called for a massive anti-SOFA rally in Baghdad on Friday. Maliki will likely launch an eleventh-hour media blitz to try to convince Iraqis that the agreement is the only way forward...
This week's summit is a test of whether Tibetans are ready to step out from under His Holiness's shadow. The Dalai Lama is not attending any of the talks, nor has he appointed anyone in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile's leadership to direct them. Instead, all the summit delegates - regional Tibetan community representatives, members of parliament, youth leaders, independence activists and other NGOs - were divided into about 15 groups by choosing numbers at random on the first day of the talks. They have split up in the various government buildings scattered around Macleodganj, where the Dalai Lama...