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BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- Three months after it was elected, Iraq's
parliament was finally sworn in on Thursday but the
20-minute session was an empty formality that did
nothing to break a government deadlock or halt a
slide to civil war.
With no agreement among Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds and
others on the posts of speaker, president, prime
minister or cabinet members, no substantive business
could be conducted.
"It is just something we have to get off our backs,"
one senior parliamentarian, who asked not to be
named, said of the long-delayed inaugural session.
"We will meet in parliament and then we'll go and
sit at the negotiating table and yell at each
other."
Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi told the 275-seat
chamber in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone government
compound that security must be the top priority if
civil war was to be averted.
"We have to tell the world there will be no civil
war among the Iraqi people. The risk is there," said
the veteran Sunni Arab politician, parliament's
oldest member.
In the north, shooting broke out when Kurdish
protesters with local grievances stormed a memorial
to the 1988 gas attack in the town of Halabja during
a ceremony to mark the 18th anniversary of the
massacre blamed on Saddam Hussein.
Witnesses said the memorial was gutted by fire and
hospital officials said one person was killed and
eight wounded.
Baghdad's normally clogged streets were empty of
cars as authorities banned traffic to avert
violence. Sectarian killings have cost over 100
lives in the past three days alone.
QUEST FOR STABILITY
In parliament, leaders said Iraq urgently needed
stability and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
whose nomination for a second term is blocking
agreement on a government, said he was ready to step
aside "if my people send me such a signal".
He did not make clear which people he meant.
Pachachi, a secular politician who was foreign
minister in the 1960s before Saddam took power, was
interrupted from the floor during his speech,
apparently by a Shi'ite leader.
Barely 20 minutes after Pachachi rose, the session
was over, having met a constitutional deadline for a
first meeting within a month of the December
election results being finalized.
The opening of the first full-term parliament since
the U.S.-led invasion three years ago should be the
culmination of a U.S.-sponsored political process
that began with the overthrow of Saddam. But
Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds cannot agree on a
coalition that Washington sees as a way to prevent
civil war.
Sunnis and Kurds oppose Jaafari and know he lacks
the full support of his fellow-Shi'ites, Iraq's
majority community.
With Washington anxious for a deal that it hopes can
bring stability and let it bring its 133,000 troops
home, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been
shepherding party leaders into intensive talks this
week on forming a government.
"They are going very slowly but they are useful and
I think we will reach some kind of deal," said one
senior politician involved in the meetings. "But
it's not clear when."
Khalilzad sat in the front row of the parliament:
"The issue of government formation must get under
way very quickly," he said afterwards. "They simply
have to come to an agreement."
SLEIGHT OF HAND
Technically, the "first" session of parliament was
not adjourned, in a legal maneuver that gives
parliament an open-ended timetable to elect a
speaker -- something the constitution demands be
done at the assembly's opening session.
Once the speaker is elected, the new constitution
sets a 30-day timetable for forming a government,
although there is dispute over whether this should
apply to the first parliament.
The Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance, the biggest bloc
in parliament, chose Jaafari to stay as prime
minister in an internal ballot last month that he
won by one vote, reflecting the alliance's own
divisions over the nomination
"Since we ourselves are stuck over Jaafari we are
still at square one," one alliance source said. "The
problem is that the Alliance is divided ... This has
weakened its position."
A senior source in a non-Shi'ite bloc said: "We will
never give up on getting rid of Jaafari. They cannot
convince us to accept someone that they themselves
are not convinced about."
After the new wave of sectarian killings in Baghdad
this week, a source in the Shi'ite religious
leadership said top clerics were worried that their
appeals for calm were going unheeded and even
militias risked losing control of their men.
Reuters
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