By Hamza Mustafa

Asharq Al-Awsat, Baghdad, July 3, 2012 – The head of the Iraqi National Alliance, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said in a statement yesterday that the reform committee – set up by the Alliance last week – will begin its work today in order to enrich and develop the Alliance’s working paper. The formation of this committee coincided with what seemed to be a retreat from the Sadrist trend regarding the process of withdrawing confidence from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Political observers in Baghdad did not rule out that Iranian pressure on Moqtada al-Sadr had forced this retreat, represented in a deliberate retraction of procedures to withdraw confidence from al-Maliki. This led the Iraqi Prime Minister to announce last week, on more than one occasion, that the process of withdrawing confidence from his premiership had ended.
However, the Sadrist trend, according to the statements made by its leadership, has denied al-Sadr’s retraction from the process of withdrawing confidence, pointing out that al-Sadr is still ready to secure the 40 remaining votes needed to complete the legal quorum of 164 votes needed for this process to begin. This means that the Iraqiya bloc and the Kurdish Alliance have collected a total of 124 votes. However Al-Sadr announced that he was not interested in a prime ministerial inquiry, saying that this could be detrimental to the political process.
For his part, a Sadrist trend MP, Jawad al-Jubouri, confirmed in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that: “What the leader of the Sadrist trend said does not represent a retreat in any sense of the word, rather it is the embodiment of a fact we are all working to overcome, namely that entering into political mazes will not lead to a withdrawal of confidence and will delay the work of the state and its institutions”.
He pointed out that “the Sadrist trend acts with political realism and it is looking for the shortest path that leads to serving the people, rather than media and political hype that does not lead to anything”.
Al-Jubouri also told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the Sadrist trend will exert pressure on the committee to complete its work properly and quickly, but not at the expense of quality, in order to initiate the second phase, namely comprehensive, effective reform. In the event that we are let down by the committee, we will look at another option, withdrawing confidence, whether through gathering votes or by conducting a prime ministerial inquiry”.
For his part, Iraqi MP for the State of Law coalition and member of the reform committee, Khalid al-Asadi, told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the committee is now engaged in preparing the mechanisms for political reform, which is consistent with all the previous ideas put forward by everyone in the dialogues and meetings that have taken place.”
He added “the committee, which meets on Tuesday, hopes that everyone will respond to what is put forward in the coming days through intensive dialogues with all partners”.
In response to a question regarding some of the agreements that have been signed, which appear to be contrary to the constitution, al-Asadi said “no one can violate the constitution but we will look for a mechanism to ensure everything without violating the constitution, because we are setting out with the sincere intention of salvation”.
He added that “the discussions with partners that the committee will conduct will lead by necessity to a national conference, consisting of the main political leaders in the country as well as the leaders of various parties and blocs, arriving at a common vision with regards to the desired reform”.