ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –

The last horse trading that should end with the Kurdistan Region getting its new government, nearly six months after elections, appears now centered on the sticky issues of who gets to control security and the interior ministry in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

"The final stage to declare the formation of the government is near. The matter should be completed in one or two days," said Jafar Ibrahim, spokesman of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which as top poll winner has had the unenviable task of trying to cobble together a coalition to run the KRG.

The security and interior ministry portfolios have become a major cause of contention between the Change Movement (Gorran) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Gorran, a splinter of the PUK, replaced its rival as the second political force in the September elections, winning 24 seats and ending the PUK's supremacy in Sulaimani province.

The PUK been reeling from a lack of leadership and its poll rout, has refused to accept the loss of popularity and power. It cannot be ignored, because of its strong ties to powerful Iran and the large Peshmarga force under its control.

Earlier this week, a senior PUK politburo member told Rudaw on condition of anonymity that the Peshmarga ministry must go to the party, because the soldiers would not take orders from anyone else in the KRG.

More recently Sadi Ahmed Pira, a senior PUK official, said that the interior ministry must not go to Gorran. "These ministries are sensitive,” he said. “It is wrong for the Peshmarga and interior ministries to be outside the control of the KDP and PUK."

The KDP itself has also insisted on getting either the interior or Peshmarga ministries.

Sources say that the KDP now has a new proposal for Gorran, if it agrees to give up the two key posts. The new package offers Gorran three seats: deputy interior minister, assistant for military affairs and general security director.

Gorran, which has long insisted on control of the interior ministry to implement its reformist agenda of uprooting corruption from the KRG, is expected to announce its acceptance or rejection of the new package in the coming days, sources say.

In the meantime, the Kurdistan Islamic Union, which won 10 seats, has been mediating between Gorran and KDP to convince the Change Movement into relinquishing the interior ministry. Sources told Rudaw that Gorran leader Nawshirwan Mustafa rejected that proposal in a meeting last week with the Islamic Union chief Muhammad Faraj.

The Islamic Union has proposed that, as a way out of the present disagreements, the key security portfolios should go to independent technocrats. That proposal has fallen on deaf ears.

Suspicions between Gorran and PUK run deep, due to earlier encounters. In 2007, PUK purged suspected senior Gorran officials from security and other positions in the government. The PUK now fears that Gorran will pay back in kind if it gains control of the interior ministry.


Rudaw