The Iraqi Front for National Dialogue (Arabic: الجبهة العراقية للحوار الوطني al-Jabha al-Iraqia li al-Hiwar al-Watani) also known as Hiwar is a Sunni Arab-led Iraqi political party. It is currently part of the secular Iraqiyya coalition.
Originally formed to contest the December 2005 elections, it described itself as a non-sectarian coalition that wants to end the presence of foreign troops and to rebuild government institutions.
The main components were initially:
- The Iraqi National Front, led by former Minister of State Saleh al-Mutlaq, who was the chief Sunni Arab negotiator for the constitution
- The National Front for a Free and United Iraq of Hassan Zaydan
- The Iraqi Christian Democratic Party of Minas al-Yusufi
- The Democratic Arab Front of Farhan al-Sudayd
- The Sons of Iraq Movement of Ali al-Suhayri
The coalition included Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Yezidis and Shabaks.
The Front is distinct from the Iraqi National Dialogue Council, headed by Khalaf al-Ulayyan, which is a component of the Iraqi Accord Front.
Mutlaq campaigned against the constitution in the October 2005 referendum, and refused to join the other main Sunni Arab-led list, Iraqi Accord Front because that group's largest component, the Iraqi Islamic Party, had backed the new constitution.
The Front performed relatively well in the December 2005 election, winning 11 seats, but complained of widespread electoral fraud and called for a re-run of the poll.
Prior to the 2010 Iraqi Elections it joined the secular Iraqiyya coalition and was allocated 16 out of their 91 seats in the Council of Representatives of Iraq, becoming the biggest individual party with a Sunni Arab majority.
|
Famous quotes containing the words iraqi, national, dialogue and/or front:
“I will cut the head off my baby and swallow it if it will make Bush lose.”
—Zainab Ismael, Iraqi housewife. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 31 (November 16, 1992)
“Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”
—William Cobbett (17621835)
“When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.”
—Ernest Becker (19241974)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)