BAGHDAD — A heated parliamentary debate on the U.S.-Iraq security treaty was called to an early close Wednesday as lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr scuffled with security guards for the foreign minister and the speaker of the legislature and his two deputies.
The session was chaotic from the start, with lawmakers shouting at one another. Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani added to the din by repeatedly yelling at legislators to sit down or keep quiet, but he failed to restore order.
The turmoil followed the announcement by two small political factions that they would join al-Sadr’s supporters in opposing the security pact, which would allow American forces to stay in Iraq for three more years.
The deal is backed by the governing coalition, which holds a majority in parliament, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is campaigning for help from other blocs in hopes of passing the measure with broader support in a vote by legislators Monday.
The Shiite Fadhila party, which has 15 seats in parliament, said it would vote against the agreement. Saleh al-Mutlaq, leader of a small Sunni bloc with 11 seats, said a U.N. mandate under which U.S. forces are in Iraq should be renewed for six months when it expires Dec. 31 so the government could negotiate a new pact.
Sadrist legislators tried to shout down a lawmaker from the ruling Shiite coalition who was reading the treaty’s text to the chamber.
When the lawmaker, Hassan al-Sineid, kept reading, Sadrist lawmaker Ahmed al-Massoudi aggressively approached the bench. He appeared to be on the verge of grabbing the document from al-Sineid, seated next to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, when security guards intervened.
Scuffling erupted and then escalated when other Sadrist legislators rushed to help their colleague, prompting the speaker to hurriedly declare the session adjourned until today.
A modest show of popular support for the agreement was on display Wednesday, when several hundred people staged demonstrations in support of the pact in the mainly Shiite southern cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf.
Under the agreement, which reflects an improving security climate, U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraqi cities by the end of next June and from the entire country by Jan. 1, 2012. It would give the Iraqis almost complete control over their operations and movements but limited judicial jurisdiction in the case of serious crimes committed by U.S. soldiers when off base and off duty.
The agreement also would bar the Americans from using Iraqi territory to attack neighboring nations.
The United States defended the agreement Wednesday, with Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell saying the document provided the time and authority needed for American troops to train Iraqi forces and go after terrorists.
In a nationally televised address Tuesday, al-Maliki also defended the treaty, saying it was a prelude to the restoration of full Iraqi sovereignty by 2012. He said the alternative would be renewing the U.N. mandate, whose terms he said compromise Iraq’s sovereignty, or leaving Iraq’s nascent security forces to fight alone after that mandate expires Dec. 31.
