Nuri Al-Maliki is struggling to remain in power after his Shiite alliance narrowly lost the March parliamentary vote to a Sunni-backed bloc. His adviser Ali Al-Moussawi said Saturday that the prime minister will assure the neighboring states that none of Iraq's major political constituencies will be excluded from a new government if they back his second term.
Al-Maliki will meet Jordan's King Abdullah on Sunday. He’ll meet with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Monday.
He will also visit Turkey and Egypt next week. Iran's Mehr news agency said Al-Maliki would hold high-level “regional and international” talks and “also discuss developments in Iraq.”
The visit comes as Al-Maliki is locked in a protracted battle for the premiership with former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Al-Maliki's Shiite-led State of Law bloc finished a narrow second behind Allawi's Sunni-dominated Iraqiya group but neither came close to securing a parliamentary majority.
Drawn-out coalition talks since the election have seen both sides courting the third-placed Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious factions.
Moqtada Sadr, whose movement controls 40 of the INA's 70 seats, has thrown his support behind Al-Maliki but the incumbent still needs the support of another INA faction, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council of Ammar Al-Hakim, which controls 17 seats and is seen as close to Tehran.
Al-Maliki already visited Iran's ally Syria on Wednesday.
He also plans to visit several Gulf Arab states, where support for his rival has been strong, his close aide said. Allawi was in Saudi Arabia last Sunday to bolster support from his leading champion which regards Al-Maliki as too close to Iran.
