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Iraqi President fails in bid to start
parliament
7.3.2006
By Bassem Mroue
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BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Iraq's president failed in a bid Monday to order
parliament into session by March 12, further
delaying formation of a government and raising
questions whether the political process can
withstand the unrelenting violence or disintegrate
into civil war.
The deadlock came as snipers assassinated Maj. Gen.
Mibder Hatim al-Dulaimi, the Sunni Arab in charge of
Iraqi forces protecting the capital. A torrent of
bombings and shootings killed 25 more Iraqis on
Monday, ending a relative lull in violence.
Officials also found four bodies.
At the heart of the dispute is a controversy over
the second-term candidacy of the Shiite prime
minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose most powerful
supporter is the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. |
Iraqi
President : Jalal Talabani
Photo: Reuters |
The Sunni Arab minority blames al-Jaafari for
failing to control the Shiite militiamen who
attacked Sunni mosques and clerics after the Feb. 22
shrine bombing in Samarra. Kurds are angry because
they believe al-Jaafari is holding up resolution of
their claims to control the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
In a bid to force a showdown in the dispute,
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, announced he would
order parliament to convene Sunday for the first
time since the elections in December and the
ratification of the results on Feb. 12.
Such a meeting would have started a 60-day countdown
for the legislators to elect a president, approve
al-Jaafari's nomination as prime minister and sign
off on his Cabinet.
Talabani was mistakenly counting on the signature of
Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite, who lost
his own bid for the prime minister's nomination by
one vote to al-Jaafari. Talabani had in hand a power
of attorney from the other vice president, Ghazi al-Yawer,
a Sunni, who was out of the country.
The Shiite bloc closed ranks and Abdul-Mahdi
declined to sign, at least for now. In an emergency
meeting with Talabani on Monday, seven Shiite
leaders rejected the president's demand for them to
abandon al-Jaafari's nomination.
It remained unclear when parliament might convene,
despite the constitutional directive that set Sunday
as the deadline. Nor was it clear how the
disagreement over al-Jaafari might be settled.
The president first issued the challenge Wednesday
in concert with Sunni Arab and some secular
politicians.
"We want a prime minister who can gather all the
political blocs around him, so that the government
would be one of national unity," Talabani told
reporters in Baghdad around midday Monday.
Leaders of all Iraq's major political factions
scheduled a meeting Tuesday evening in an attempt to
untangle the religious and sectarian differences
behind the crisis, deeply compounded by continuing
violence.
The attacks underscore the dangerous leadership
vacuum and fresh political infighting that have torn
apart many tenuous political bonds among the
country's many religious and ethnic factions.
There also were increasing signs of a split in the
Shiite factions, even though they managed to come
together Monday night to reject the move to dump al-Jaafari.
Nevertheless, al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose
backing had insured al-Jaafari's nomination at the
Shiite caucus last month, predicted a "quick
solution" on approving a government.
There were reports that al-Sadr had threatened to
order parliamentarians loyal to him to boycott a
Sunday session if Abdul-Mahdi, the Shiite vice
president, had signed the Talabani order to convene
the legislature.
"All obstacles to forming a national unity
government soon will be resolved," al-Sadr said
after meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and acting
Oil Minister Ahmad Chalabi in the Shiite holy city
of Najaf.
Many of Monday's attacks targeted the country's
Shiite-led security forces, accused by Sunni Arabs
of repeated abuses against them under the cover of
fighting the Sunni-driven insurgency. The government
denies the accusations.
In Baqouba, a car bomb targeting an Iraqi police
patrol exploded near the mayor's office and a
market, killing six people and wounding 23,
including four patrolmen, police said. Piles of
charred, twisted wreckage and pools of blood marked
the site.
Elsewhere, two bombs went off in Baghdad's notorious
southern Dora neighborhood. One targeted an Interior
Ministry patrol, killing six Iraqis. A second
exploded as a U.S. patrol was passing, wounding five
policemen who were guarding a bank and two
civilians.
A U.S. soldier was also killed Sunday in
insurgency-plagued western Anbar province, the
military announced, bringing to 2,300 the number of
U.S. service members who have died in Iraq since the
war began three years ago, according to an
Associated Press count.
Al-Dulaimi, the Sunni in charge patrolling Baghdad
with his 6th army division, was killed when gunmen
fired at his convoy.
The U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey,
sent condolences to "his family, tribe, and the
Iraqi Army during this tragic loss."
"This tragic incident will neither impede the 6th
Iraqi Army Division from continuing its mission of
securing Baghdad nor derail the formation of the
government of Iraq," Casey said in a statement.
AP
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