By Jim Muir
BBC News, Iraq
**Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has indicated that he expects to retain his position in Sunday’s general election.**Mr Talabani told the BBC he also believed the post-election government would not be a national unity one like the outgoing cabinet.
Instead, he predicted, it would be a majority government.
The president, a Kurd, dismissed any threat from the new Kurdish reform movement, Goran, to his own PUK party and its ally, the KDP.
Goran made considerable inroads into PUK’s support in the regional elections last year, but Mr Talabani believed it would not do so well in these national elections.
Speaking in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan where he has been campaigning for his party, Mr Talabani predicted Goran would just take a handful of the more than 60 seats the Kurds should win in the new Iraqi parliament.
Goran itself expects to do much better, perhaps pushing the PUK into third position and undermining Mr Talabani’s claim to a top job in Baghdad.
“The national unity government failed because it was obstructing the work of the government”
Jalal Talabani
Iraqi president
But Mr Talabani seemed very confident that he will be named president of Iraq once again.
He said four of the major Iraqi blocs competing in the polls, including the two Shiite alliances, had asked him to stand again.
But he believed the next cabinet would be radically different from the outgoing national unity government.
"I don’t think there will be a national unity government.
"The national unity government failed because it was obstructing the work of the government.
"This time it will be the government of the majority. Of course, the Kurdistan alliance [will be] included. "
It would bring together the two big Shia coalitions and the Kurds with the possible inclusion of one of the Sunni religious groups, leaving other factions in opposition.
With the Sunni component a bit of an optional extra, that would clearly make it no easier for Iraq to win full acceptance by the wider mainly Sunni Arab world of which Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was very much part.