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Iraq speaker threatens to dissolve
parliament over budget
13.2.2008
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February 13, 2008
BAGHDAD, Iraq, — The speaker of Iraq’s
fragmented parliament threatened Tuesday to disband
the legislature, saying it is so riddled with
distrust it appears unable to adopt the budget or
agree on a law setting a date for provincial
elections.
Disbanding parliament would prompt new elections
within 60 days and further undermine Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki’s shaky government, which is limping
along with nearly half of the 40 Cabinet posts
vacant.
The disarray undermines the purpose of last year’s
U.S. troop “surge” to bring down violence enough to
allow the Iraqi government and parliament to focus
on measures to reconcile differences among minority
Sunnis and Kurds and the majority Shiites. Violence
is down dramatically, but political progress
languishes.
Iraq’s constitution allows Mahmoud al-Mashhadani,
the hot-tempered speaker and a member of the
minority Sunni faction,www.ekurd.net
to dissolve parliament
if one-third of its members request the move and a
majority of lawmakers approve. Al-Mashhadani said he
already had sufficient backing for the move from
five political blocs, but he refused to name them.
Al-Mashhadani said the Iraqi treasury already has
lost $3 billion by failing to pass the budget before
the end of 2007. He did not explain how the money
was lost.
He blamed the lack of a budget on Kurdish
politicians who have refused to back down from a
demand that their regional and semiautonomous
government be guaranteed 17 percent of national
income.
The 17 percent formula for Kurds was applied to past
budgets, but some Sunni and Shiite lawmakers sought
to lower it to about 14 percent.
The argument is that the Kurdish population is
closer to 14 percent of Iraq’s total than 17 percent
as Kurds insist. There has been no census in
decades.
Shiite lawmakers walked out of the rare night
session yesterday when the Kurds refused to drop
their demand to lump the budget vote together with
two other contested measures.
Kurds said they feared being double-crossed on the
budget, which now calls for restoration of the 17
percent Kurdish share, if parliamentarians voted on
the laws separately.
AP
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