The parliamentary elections from Iraq scheduled to be held on 7 March 2010 are generally considered to be significantly important since they can determine the course of the nation either towards a stable and consolidating democracy or towards ethnic conflicts and precarious security conditions.

DAMASCUS - Over the weekend, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced that it had arrested more than 150 people, including former Ba'athists and members of al-Qaeda, in the troubled province of Nineveh in northern Iraq.

Mosul/Washington/Brussels, 28 September 2009: Arabs and Kurds must urgently agree to a power-sharing deal, joint patrols in disputed areas and protection of minority groups to prevent escalating violence in Ninewa from endangering what remains highly fragile and uneven progress in Iraq.

A new Shiite-led political alliance that will contest Iraq's next election has not closed the door on Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and may yet join with him for January's vote, a leading Shiite politician said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Da'wa party is carefully considering its alliances ahead of a crucial parliamentary election that will likely determine whether he remains in power.

WASHINGTON - Underscoring its reliance on outside contractors, the State Department said Wednesday that it had extended a contract in Iraq with a subsidiary of the company formerly known as Blackwater, even though the business was denied an Iraqi government license to operate in the country.