Baghdad liberation very close, says Iraqi Baathist leader

Iraqi media have broadcast an audio recording allegedly belonging to the Secretary General of the Iraqi Baathist Party, Izzat al-Douri, in which he says that “the revolutionaries’ control of Baghdad will take place very soon.”

In the recording, al-Douri also calls on the outgoing prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to “repent.”

Iraqi parliament is scheduled to hold its second session on Sunday, after the failure of the first session to elect a Speaker, amid the general lack of consensus regarding the presidents of the three chambers of government.

UN envoy in Iraq Nikolay Mladenov warned of the country’s possible spiral into chaos if the parliament fails to make any progress towards the formation of the government.