The Kuwaiti AsSiasa daily quoted a senior Iraqi Kurdish official in Baghdad as saying that Nouri Maliki considers the new warming of relations between the US government and Saudi Arabia after Obama’s recent visit to Riyadh and his constructive talks with the Saudi king as a major defeat for himself, Kuwait’s al-Seyassah daily reported.
During the past few years and even before Obama’s Riyadh visit last week, Maliki had sent dozens of reports to the US government accusing the Saudi government of supporting terrorism in the region, this Iraqi Kurdish official continued, adding the Iranian and Syrian regimes have had the main role of encouraging most of these reports and remarks in order to taint the Saudi’s image. Therefore, Maliki considers Obama’s visit to Riyadh as a major political blow to his efforts aimed at degrading Saudi Arabia’s regional role because he sees his efforts bearing no fruit.
Maliki has ordered the imams of a number of various Shiite mosques in the cities of Najaf and Karbala to increase their attacks on Saudi Arabia and accuse the kingdom of terrorism, the senior Kurdish official added. Maliki is more seeking to strengthen his parliamentary position in upcoming April 30th elections, he continued.
This source said a few days ago the Iraqi Foreign Ministry issued a report for Maliki’s office suggesting to him to increase his ties with the Gulf countries. However, Maliki has not responded to this suggestion.
This senior Kurdish official accused the Iranian regime of having a major role in preventing Iraq from cooperating with Saudi Arabia’s decisions against terrorism, because this cooperation will turn a new page in the relations between the two countries and might actually lead to a strong and strategic relation between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and the main gate would be to fight against terrorism.
This senior Kurdish official emphasized the main concern for the Iranian regime is a security and intelligence cooperation agreement between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and Tehran expressed its opposition to this matter in numerous meetings with Iraqi officials because the Iranian regime is seeking a monopoly on security cooperation agreements with Baghdad, and it is worried that a Saudi-Iraqi security agreement will lead to full political relations between the two countries.