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BAGHDAD, March 29 (AFP) - 10h59 - At least 18
people were wounded Tuesday by a car bomb targeting
a Kurdish official in the divided northern oil city
of Kirkuk as Iraq's new parliament was set to elect
a speaker amid tight security.
At least four of Baghdad's main bridges were closed
to traffic, while Iraqi police and soldiers fanned
out on the streets and US helicopters patrolled the
skies for the session, only the second since
historic January 30 elections.
The Kirkuk bomb went off in the path of a convoy
carrying the city's water chief, Abdulqader Zanganah,
a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, in the
second assassination attempt against a KDP official
in three days.
Several buildings in the predominantly Kurdish
neighbourhood of Rahimawa were also damaged by the
blast, said the area's police chief, Colonel Adel
Zeinalbeddin.
He said preliminary inquiries suggested that a
bomb-rigged vehicle parked on a sidestreet had been
detonated by remote control.
Five of the wounded were in serious condition,
hospital officials said. Zanganah's condition was
not immediately clear.
KDP leader Massoud Barzani has been one of the most
outspoken champions of Kurdish demands for Kirkuk to
be incorporated in their autonomous region in
northern Iraq, despite the opposition of the city's
Turkmen minority and Arabs settled in the city under
Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Kurdish alliance emerged as the second largest
bloc from January's elections after the main Shiite
list and its support is vital for the two-thirds
majority required to approve a new government.
The Kurds have made the Kirkuk issue a central
demand in coalition talks, which are still dragging
on more than eight weeks after the election.
MPs were to meet Tuesday for a largely formalistic
session to elect a speaker and two deputies after
their inaugural session on March 16.
"I hope the assembly will continue its meetings
because we have a lot of work ahead of us and
millions of Iraqis have pinned their hopes on this
body," said Sami al-Askari, a member of the Shiite
United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
Both Shiites and Kurds have agreed to award the
speakership to one of around 20 Sunni Arabs who won
seats in the 275-member national assembly in a bid
to reach out to the embittered community that
largely boycotted the election.
The Shiites were backing UIA member Sheikh Fawaz al-Jarba,
a tribal leader from the powerful Shammar tribal
confederation, which straddles the sectarian divide.
A Shiite negotiator said the Kurds wanted Hajem al-Hassani,
the outgoing industry minister, who won a seat in
parliament as part of the list of outgoing President
Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab.
Hassani is a native of Kirkuk and a devout Muslim
who studied and worked in the United States before
returning to Iraq after Saddam's fall in April 2003.
The Sunnis were meeting among themselves and
expected to give a name Tuesday morning, said Shiite
negotiator Jawad Maliky.
For their part, the Kurds were far from thrilled
with Jarba.
"He is a member of the UIA. It would be better to
choose an independent Sunni politician if we want a
national unity government," outgoing foreign
minister and senior Kurdish official Hoshyar Zebari
told AFP.
The Kurds also wish to temper Islamist influence in
the Shiite bloc by including members of outgoing
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular alliance.
Allawi has said clerics must stay out of politics if
he is to join a new governing coalition, an aide of
the secular politician told AFP on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Romanian foreign ministry announced
that three journalists working for the private
television station Prima TV were feared missing in
Iraq.
"Contacted by the management of Prima TV about the
possible disappearance in Iraq of three of its
journalists, the ministry and the main intelligence
services have formed a crisis cell," a statement
said.
The apparent disappearance of the journalists,
including a woman, follows a surprise visit to
Romania's 800 soldiers in Iraq by President Traian
Basescu on Sunday.
Prima TV's news director Dan Dumitru said the
station's management had received a telephone call
around 1700 GMT Monday during which they "heard
voices speaking Arabic as well as journalist
Marie-Jeanne Ion calling out in English: 'Don't kill
us, we are journalists, we don't have any money'."
AFP
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