BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday reiterated his calls to rely on the the Constitution to settle the current conflicts and differences, saying that "good citizenship is the sound basis for building of a new state."

"We are striving today in different fields of Iraq's reconstruction; we can express our pride in this process, stemming from the principles we depend on to build a rising state in development, step-by-step," Maliki told a Cultural Conference held in Baghdad on Wednesday.

"The best investments for the future necessitate the achievement of a network of projects, commitments, principles and other facilities, in which we mean that citizenship necessitates that we build the state of citizenship, which is the main basis for the building of the state and its progress," Maliki said

"For a State of Constitution and a State of Law to exist, we develop and establish culture throughout various societies; this is the common ground that all Iraqis strived for and according to which the state was built," Maliki noted. 

The Iraqi Prime Minister also highlighted that the "other main basis is freedom and democracy, according to which every Iraqi can survive , and if that the Iraqi person is prevented from enjoying such freedoms, he would no longer be a part of the state and instead against it,"

SKH (TI)/SR