mr president baroness ashton i am deeply concerned about the progress of the situation in iraq
the recent uprising there when the people took to the streets particularly young people who cannot get jobs who see the broken economy the continuing lack of security and sectarian killings was brutally repressed
twenty nine people were killed many hundreds were injured
there is now an indication that ayad allawi whose al-iraqiya party won the election last march is going to withdraw from the coalition because prime minister nouri al-maliki has defaulted on the many promises that he made to al-iraqiya in the coalition deal
if that happens we are going to be back to square one with a sectarian government backed by both al-hakim and muqtada al-sadr at the behest of tehran and we will have a destabilised situation where the party who won the election is no longer in government
that cannot be acceptable surely in terms of the future of the middle east
