BAGHDAD, 8 September 2006 — Iraq’s Parliament abruptly adjourned yesterday after several Shiite lawmakers tried to force debate on the divisive issue of federalism, which Sunnis fear could lead to the breakup of the country.
Saleh Al-Mutlaq of the Sunni National Dialogue Front said afterward that parliamentary security guards had been summoned into the debating chamber amid fears that lawmakers’ heated exchanges could turn violent.
The Parliament faces a deadline in the coming weeks for determining how regions can win autonomy under a federal constitution passed last October despite opposition from the once-dominant Sunni minority. There is some debate on exactly when the deadline should be considered to fall.
Officials in the dominant Shiite Alliance bloc said on Wednesday they had completed a draft of their proposal for a mechanism by which provinces could form autonomous regions.
Sunnis, concentrated in Iraq’s resource-poor central and western provinces, are opposed to such a move, fearing it would seal their political doom by giving Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north an unfair share of Iraq’s oil.
Shiite lawmakers tried to force discussion and a vote on their proposal during yesterday’s sometimes rowdy session, but the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, angrily cut them off, saying he had not received the proposal.
“This is an insult to me,” he told lawmakers. “This proposal should have been submitted ... two days ago. I just heard about it today.” After he adjourned the session, he was due to meet leaders of the political blocs to discuss scheduling the federalism issue, a source in the parliamentary administration said.
Meanwhile, 15 Iraqis were killed and 40 wounded in five separate attacks in Baghdad yesterday, the latest fatalities following the executions the previous day of 27 Iraqis convicted of charges including terrorism, murder and rape.
Three police officers were killed and 15 people were injured in the city’s Al-Tayaran square when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle as a police patrol was passing, Interior Ministry sources said.
In another attack a suicide car bomber targeted a petrol station near Al-Shaab stadium in eastern Baghdad, killing nine Iraqis including 3 policemen and wounding 17. A third suicide car bomb explosion targeted a police patrol near the Al-Nedaa mosque in the district of Al-Kahira, killing two people and wounding three others including police officers. Another civilian was killed when an explosive device went off in Al-Mansour district while 5 others were wounded when a mortar shell fell near the recreational club in Al-Yarmouk district.
Twenty-seven Iraqis were executed Wednesday by the Iraqi authorities on charges of terrorism, murder and rape in a number of Iraqi governorates, the official Al-Iraqiya TV reported. The report showed three of the condemned dressed in green with their heads covered in black bags.
Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq called for Muslims to unite against the “enemy,” according to an audiotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television: “Our enemy has unified his ranks. Now is the time to unite,” said the man identified as Abu Ayyub Al-Masri.
Yesterday Iraq’s government closed the Baghdad bureau of the Al-Arabiya pan-Arab satellite news channel for a month.
Despite criticism from local and international media bodies, the government said it took the decision because the channel failed to heed warnings about its coverage. Al-Jazeera was barred from Iraq two years ago.
On the political front, coalition forces in Iraq have handed over control of Iraq’s armed forces command to the government at a ceremony in Baghdad, the Al-Arabiya news channel reported yesterday.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki took the first step toward taking control of his own military yesterday, signing an accord with US officers at a ceremony in Baghdad. The handover gives Maliki operational control of Iraq’s fledgling air force and navy, and began the process of putting the army’s 10 divisions under a newly-created joint headquarters, independent of US control.
“It’s a great step and a great day in Iraqi history,” Maliki said at a ceremony at the defense ministry in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone. “The new Iraqi Army is being built by the courage of its sons who will dedicate their lives to protect their citizenry, and today the new Iraqi army has been rebuilt on values other than sectarianism,” he added.
