Al-Maliki rubbishes Mosul fall blame; Al-Abadi in reform push

BAGHDAD: former Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki on Tuesday denounced as worthless a parliamentary report which blamed him and others for the fall of Mosul to Daesh last year and which called for them to be referred to the judiciary.
“There is no value to the results that came out of the parliamentary investigation committee,” Al-Maliki said on Facebook in his first public comments since the report was released on Sunday and referred to the public prosecutor on Monday.
Al-Maliki, who has been in Iran since Friday according to his website, said political differences in the panel compromised its objectivity.
Al-Maliki, who had previously accused unnamed countries, commanders and rival politicians of plotting the city’s fall, on Tuesday blamed Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish leaders.
“What happened in Mosul was a conspiracy planned in Ankara, then the conspiracy moved to Erbil,” he said in a second Facebook post, referring to the capitals of neighboring Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq whose forces have taken a leading role in battling Daesh.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said he was canceling the positions of advisers hired as contractors in ministries and limiting the number of advisers for himself, the president, and the parliamentary speaker to five each.
It was not immediately clear how many positions would be affected by the decision, which was announced in a post on Facebook.
The sackings are the latest in a sweeping reform campaign launched last week aimed at reducing graft and incompetence in government.