DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad held talks on Monday with former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi who is at the centre of months of haggling over the formation of a new government in neighboring Iraq.
Assad reiterated "Syria’s support for any inter-Iraqi accord (on forming a government) which conserves the unity of Iraq, its Arab identity and its sovereignty," Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.
Allawi, who is vying for the post of prime minister with the incumbent, Nuri Al-Maliki, in turn thanked Syria for playing host to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and its support for efforts to restore stability in Iraq.
Efforts to form a new government, more than four months after a March 7 election in Iraq, also figured in talks in Damascus last Saturday between Assad and Iraq’s radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr.
The bloc of anti-US cleric Sadr, who lives in self-imposed exile in Iran, gained 39 seats in Iraq’s new 325-strong parliament, against 91 for Allawi and 89 for Maliki — both also Shias.
