Nouri al-Maliki

 U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused Iran on Thursday of "mucking around" in Iraq's May parliamentary election, in which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is seeking another term after a successful, U.S.-backed war against Islamic State militants, Reuters reported.

Romania, as a country that has been on Iraq's side in the fight against Daesh, "has every right" to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiker Al-Jaafari told a joint news conference with his Romanian counterpart Teodor Melescanu on Thursday, in Bucharest.

Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki has rejected an initiative sponsored by the United Nations regarding a planned independence referendum in northern Iraq, saying that it contains several elements that are against the country's constitution. 

Iraq will not allow the creation of a "second Israel" in the northern parts of the country, the vice-president and former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said, quoted by the Anatolian agency.

His speech came at a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq Douglas Silimon and concerns the referendum on independence prepared by authorities in the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud - Photo: Twitter / @sudouest

The recapture of Mosul is an achievement of the Iraqi people while the US is trying to highjack it and claims it was them who "led that war," Iraq's Vice President Nouri al-Maliki has told the RIA Novosti news agency.

We are all locked in on Syria. Our eyes and ears have been focused on this land. Yet this seems to make us overlook what's going on in another country along Turkey's southern borders, which is Iraq. The country has been going through its darkest period in the last 14 years, ever since the U.S. invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

An Iraqi police officer was killed and seven others wounded in clashes on Feb. 11 with protesters loyal to prominent Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in central Baghdad, an interior ministry spokesman said. 

Not too long ago, it was only three months ago when Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi issued harsh statements against Turkey. During Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım's recent visit to Iraq, al-Abadi was constructive and is expected to visit Turkey in March or April. 

"Ten years ago, the Americans helped Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province west of Baghdad form the 'Awakening' movement to defeat a previous incarnation of violent fundamentalist Islam - al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A resolution adopted by Iraq's parliament criticizing the Turkish military presence at the Bashiqa base in northern Iraq does not represent all of Iraqis, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said, describing the move as ill-intended.