Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq’s parliament on Monday shrugged off U.S. criticism and adjourned for a month, as key lawmakers declared there was no point waiting any longer for the prime minister to deliver Washington-demanded benchmark legislation for their vote.
Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the final three- hour session without a quorum present and declared lawmakers would not reconvene until Sept. 4. That date is just 11 days before the top U.S. military and political officials in Iraq must report to Congress on American progress in taming violence and organizing conditions for sectarian reconciliation.
The recess, coupled with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s failure to get the key draft laws before legislators, may nourish growing opposition to the war among U.S. lawmakers, who could refuse to fund it.
Critics have questioned how Iraqi legislators could take a summer break while U.S. forces are fighting and dying to create conditions under which important laws could be passed in the service of ending sectarian political divisions and bloodshed.
But in leaving parliament, many lawmakers blamed al-Maliki.
“Even if we sit next month, there’s no guarantee that important business will be done,” said Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish legislator. The parliament had already extended its session by a month, having initially planned a recess for July and August.
The September reports by Ambassador Ryan Crocker and U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus were to assess progress by the Iraqi government and its security forces on 18 political and security benchmarks.
Those include a so-called oil law that would set out rules for foreign investment and the fair distribution of revenue to all of Iraq’s sects and ethnic groups.
In Washington, the State Department was unusually silent on the matter, declining to criticize the lawmakers for the break.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in Iraq,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey said. “I’ll leave it to the parliamentary leaders themselves to explain why this might be a good time to take a break.”
Meanwhile, al-Maliki faces a revolt within his party by factions that want him out as Iraqi leader, according to officials in his office and the political party he leads.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, al-Maliki’s predecessor, leads the challenge based on his concerns that al-Maliki’s policies had led Iraq into turmoil because the prime minister was doing too little to promote national reconciliation.
Also Monday, a small bus exploded in a central Baghdad market district, killing at least six people – a brutal reminder of the dangers facing Iraqis who celebrated in the streets by the tens of thousands Sunday night after their national team won the prestigious Asian Cup soccer tournament.
At least 31 people were wounded in the blast, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information.
A total of 42 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Monday, according to police, hospital and morgue officials.
The U.S. military said three soldiers were killed in fighting in Anbar province west of Baghdad on Thursday. At least 3,651 members of the U.S. military have died since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
