Less than a week ago we learned that Iraq's top Sunni official was setting a deadline of May 15th for there to be significant progress on making changes to the Iraqi constitution. In an interview with CNN Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi announced plans to pull his political bloc out of the government -- and resign as vice-president -- on May 15 if promised constitutional changes were not made.
This is the way the Iraqi Study Group described this key figure:
"Hashimi is one of two vice presidents of Iraq and the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Muslim bloc in parliament. Hashimi opposes the formation of autonomous regions and has advocated the distribution of oil revenues based on population, a reversal of de-:Baathification, and the removal of Shiite militia fighters from the Iraqi security forces. Shiite death squads have recently killed three of his siblings."
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