Iraq parliament to meet, no government deal yet

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three months after it was elected,
Iraq’s parliament will finally sit on Thursday but the session
will be largely devoid of practical meaning as talks on forming
a national unity government are still deadlocked.

“Nothing will happen today. There’ll be no breakthrough,
nothing. It is just something we have to get off our backs,”
one senior parliamentarian told Reuters on condition of
anonymity.

“We will meet in parliament and then will go and sit at the
negotiating table (about forming the coalition government) and
yell at each other,” said the parliamentarian, noting the first
sitting was largely dictated by a constitutional deadline.

Baghdad’s normally clogged streets were empty of cars as
authorities imposed a vehicle ban to prevent violence.

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 Hussein, but Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds
cannot agree on a coalition that Washington sees as a way to
avert civil war.

As a result, to satisfy a constitutional rule that the
speaker be appointed at the first session, Thursday’s meeting
will not formally adjourn, leaving the “first” sitting open for
however many days it takes to reach agreement.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari insisted again on
Wednesday he would not give up his nomination for a second term
and that another month should be enough to get a deal.

Although the new constitution, ratified last year, sets a
30-day timetable for appointing a prime minister, there is a
dispute over whether to apply it this first time around.

INSURGENTS

Sunnis, from whom insurgents gather their support, and
Kurds know Jaafari does not have the full support of his fellow
Shi’ite Muslims — the majority community in Iraq — and are
gunning for him.

Parliamentary officials said some speeches on the first day
may touch on the sectarian killings that have spread since the
bombing of a Shi’ite shrine three weeks ago and which many fear
are pushing Iraq irreversibly toward civil war.

The session is due to open at 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) in the
makeshift Convention Center premises of its predecessor in the
fortified, so-called Green Zone in Baghdad.

A senior parliamentary official from the ruling Shi’ite
Alliance bloc, Rida Jawad al-Takki, said outgoing speaker Hajim
al-Hassani would summarize the achievements of last year’s
interim legislature, which drew up a constitution still
fiercely opposed by most leaders of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

After that, the new parliament would be called to order by
Adnan Pachachi, the oldest member and a patrician former
foreign minister from the days before Saddam Hussein in the
1960s.

Each of the 275 members would swear an oath, Takki said.

Pachachi would also end the session, telling members it
would technically remain open.

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.”

FAILURES

One source in the Shi’ite Alliance said one sticking point
was the bloc’s own divisions over Jaafari, blamed by some for
failures in security and the economy over the past year. He won
an internal Alliance ballot by a single vote last month.

“Since we ourselves are stuck over Jaafari we are still at
square one,” the source said. “The problem is that the Alliance
is divided … This has weakened the Alliance position.”

A senior source in one of the other blocs 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.”

On Wednesday, Iraqi police accused U.S. troops of killing
five children in a raid on an al Qaeda suspect as Saddam used
his televised trial to call on people to “resist the invaders.”

The judge promptly cut off the cameras and barred the
press.

After a new wave of sectarian killings in Baghdad this
week, the Shi’ite religious leadership issued an alarm signal
when a senior source told Reuters top clerics’ appeals for calm
were going unheeded and militias were at risk of losing
control.

Police and witnesses said 11 members of a family were
killed in the U.S. raid, which occurred in Ishaqi, a town in
Saddam’s home province north of Baghdad. The U.S. military said
two women and a child died as troops arrested the al Qaeda
militant.

Television footage showed the bodies of five children, two
men and four women in the Tikrit morgue. One infant had a
gaping head wound. All the children seemed younger than school
age.

“It’s a clear and perfect crime,” said a senior policeman,
declining to be named.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald)