BAGHDAD, 16 April 2006 — As Iraq continued to flounder without a new government four months after landmark legislative elections, lawmakers criticized their leaders yesterday for failing them amid the spiraling violence. At least 12 people, including three Iraqi soldiers, were killed in a series of bombings and shootings across Iraq yesterday.
The spike in violence comes at a time when the country’s political leaders have failed at putting together a working Cabinet after holding elections for the first permanent post-Saddam Hussein parliament in December.
“US and Iraqi leaders have failed the Iraqis,” Mahmud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker, told AFP. “Today we enter the fifth month since the holding of the elections and we still do not have a government. In fact we have not even started the process of forming the government by at least having a prime minister,” Othman said. “This shows that all of us as leaders and the US authorities have failed in Iraq.”
The political crisis has largely been aggravated in recent weeks by Ibrahim Jaafari’s refusal to step down as the next premier - despite opposition from Kurdish and Sunni lawmakers, as well as his own Shiite alliance.
In fact, the Shiite alliance’s inability to solve the Jaafari crisis has also displeased the office of Iraq’s revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. Sistani’s aide Ahmed Al-Safi blamed the alliance for the precarious security situation. “There is a crisis of trust among the lists which won the Parliament seats,” he told Iraq’s Al-Sharqiya television, referring to the alliance.
For his part, Jaafari has remained defiant, claiming he has a responsibility to Iraqis to continue as the premier. “I was the legitimate and democratic choice,” Jaafari told Britain’s Channel 4 television Friday. “I wouldn’t have accepted the responsibility if I thought it was against the will of the people. I don’t see how I could repay my people’s faith in me by letting them down.”
In violence yesterday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed as their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad’s dangerous southern Al-Dura neighborhood, while another eight soldiers were wounded.
Four civilians were also killed in a car bomb blast targeting a police patrol in eastern Baghdad. The blast wounded 28 others, including three policemen. Two US Marines were killed in a rebel attack, the military announced yesterday, bringing its death toll since the beginning of the month to about 35. It said 22 other Marines were wounded in the attack, but did not provide details. The US military death toll in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has reached 2,368, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
