Parliament held its first meeting of the third session amid international presence

It is scheduled for the new members to take oath and then they choose a Speaker and two vice presidents, but the last paragraph excludes achieving it due to lack of political agreement on them.

The presidency of Iraq has issued last Thursday, a decree called for the new MPs who were elected on the 30th of April to hold their first session on Tuesday, headed by the eldest member, a Mehdi al-Hafez, according to the announcement by the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC).

“Shafaq News” reporter said that all members of the parliament and the various parliamentary blocs have attended this meeting.

He said that the representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations , Nikolai Miladinov had attended along with a number of representatives of international missions to the parliament as well as the leaders of Iraqi politicians.

The General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers has announced on Sunday, the delay of the official working hours on Tuesday in the capital, Baghdad, in conjunction with the first meeting of the new parliament.

The outgoing prime minister had said during a meeting with a number of security leaders at the headquarters of Baghdad Operations Command that "there are those who seek to delay the first session of the parliament  after they failed to stop the elections”.

The Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has called the political forces to agree on the selection of a prime minister prior to the meeting of the parliament today, and also called for those powers to attend today's meeting.

 National Alliance biggest bloc, which represents the Shiite component has failed in naming its candidate for the presidency of the Council of Ministers of the new government, as Union national forces also was unable to name   its candidate for the Presidency of the parliament, while waiting for the Kurds announcement of the candidates in order to take the initiative in providing its candidate for the presidency.

The Kurdish blocs , Motahedoun coalition, led by the outgoing Parliament Speaker , Osama al-Nujaifi, and the National Coalition one of the parties of the Shiite alliance reject to give the outgoing Prime Minister , Nuri al-Maliki and the winner of the first legislative elections by 95 votes the same position for the third time.

Blocs opposed to the third term of Maliki have questioned the election results, which was announced last May as the State of Law coalition, led by Maliki who won the elections.

Maliki's opponents say that he has failed to run the country in political, service, security and economic terms for eight years, while al-Maliki said that his opponents were prevented from carrying out his functions for political goals.

This comes at a time ISIL militants and its allied groups still head to cities and towns in Iraq since the tenth of this month and took control on Mosul , Tikrit, parts of Diyala, Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Anbar in the biggest challenge to the Iraqi government since the overthrow of the former regime in 2003.