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Four major Iraqi political parties unveiled an new governing coalition of moderate Shia and Kurdish parties on Tuesday.
The deal formalized an alliance between Maliki's Dawa Party, Vice President Adel Abdel Mehdi's Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (PDK).
Following the announcement of the four-way alliance on Thursday, Talabani said parties to this alliance have a parliamentary majority, VOI reported.
"We have majority and the other parties that will join us have a sufficient number of members of parliament," said the Iraqi president, adding "we would never close the door to anyone. We hope an agreement will be reached with the brothers in the (Sunni) Iraqi Accordance Front."
One of the new alliance's legislative goals, according to Prime Minister Maliki, would be to address charges that his government is biased against Sunnis, which could prove a difficult task as the new governing coalition doesn't include any Sunnis.
The Sunni parties of the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) recently commenced a boycott of the government, withdrawing their 44-seats.
According to VOI, Talabani said they had contacted the largest Sunni party of the bloc, the Iraqi Islamic Party, in an attempt to involve it in the agreement, but it responded "that the circumstances were not appropriate."
The AP reports Iraq's Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, and his moderate Iraqi Islamic party refused to join despite assurances from the country's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, that the door was "always open".
A representative of the party said it had only received the invitation to join the coalition yesterday. "We said we are not ready to join this alliance at the current time," he added.
President Talabani refused to use the word “quartet” or “moderates’ bloc” to describe the new alliance, “We cannot call it a bloc, but rather an agreement between four parties committed to former agreements for reviving the political process."
“The bloc consists of four parties now but it is open for all parties to take part in it,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.
“We will try to revive the stagnant political process; we will not accept it to be hampered. The agreement is not a replacement of the political blocs, the door is open for all to participate,” the premier explained.
