FIFA gives Iraq one year to resolve turmoil

World football’s governing body FIFA on Tuesday gave Iraqi football chiefs a one year deadline to settle their differences after July’s elections to the Iraqi Football Association fell into disarray.

FIFA lifted its suspension on the IFA on March 19 after a solution was reportedly found to a spat over alleged government interference.

But about a week before a new IFA election was due to take place, soldiers sought to arrest contested association chief Hussein Said and three other senior officials on corruption charges.

Two rival general assemblies were then held in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and in the northern city of Erbil on July 24, prompting the IFA to postpone elections of a new executive committee.

“Under these circumstances, the case was referred to the FIFA Emergency Committee which decided to extend the current mandate of the IFA Executive Committee for one year, meaning until 31 July 2011,” FIFA said.

“This deadline should allow both groups to settle their differences and to thus permit the election of a new board,” it added in a statement.

World football chiefs had suspended the Iraqi association in November 2009 after Iraqi police seized control of the association’s offices and its board was dissolved on charges of links to executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

FIFA then demanded the reinstatement of the association’s executive committee and threatened to ban Iraq from international matches over “governmental interference in the electoral process” of the IFA.

Iraqi authorities have been trying to expel Said because of his ties with the former regime.

Iraq was briefly sidelined from international football in May 2008, after the government dissolved the national Olympic Committee and a year after the national side won the Asian Cup.