Will Iraqi parliament meeting fan unrest?

updated 1:20 p.m. ET March 6, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s president said Monday he would convene the new parliament for the first time next week, beginning a 60-day countdown during which lawmakers must elect a new head of state and sign off on a prime minister and Cabinet.

After nightfall, nine key Shiite parliamentarians rushed to an emergency meeting at President Jalal Talabani’s Baghdad home to try to change his mind about forcing a showdown in the deepening political crisis and further inflaming sectarian tensions.

A string of explosions in Baghdad and north of the capital, meanwhile, killed at least 14 people and wounded 52. Sniper fire also killed the Iraqi major general in charge of forces protecting the beleaguered capital.

A U.S. soldier was reported killed in insurgency-plagued western Anbar province, pushing the American military death toll to 2,300 since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The violence underscored a dangerous leadership vacuum as Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians increased pressure on Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to abandon his bid for a new term, and leaders of Iraq’s Shiite majority struggled to overcome internal divisions.

Despite the political squabbling, Talabani had said earlier Monday he would issue a decree calling the new parliament into session on March 12, as required by the constitution, which allows a maximum four weeks between certification of the Dec. 15 vote and the first meeting.

Top politician: Shiites hope to delay meeting
A leading member of al-Jaafari’s Dawa Party, Ali al-Adib, said parliament’s main Shiite bloc would request the session be postponed until there was agreement on who should occupy the top government positions.

Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr predicted a “quick solution” to snarled attempts to form a government.

Emerging from a meeting in the Shiite holy city of Najaf with secular Shiite parliamentarian Ahmed Chalabi, al-Sadr said: “All obstacles to forming a national unity government soon will be resolved.”

Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favorite as Iraq’s post-Saddam Hussein leader, said al-Jaafari deserved the opportunity to form a government.

“Dr. al-Jaafari should be given a chance. ... It is to the benefit of all parties to keep the (Shiite) Alliance strong and unified,” Chalabi said.

But Talabani, a Kurd, said al-Jaafari was too divisive a figure.

“We want a prime minister who can gather all the political blocs around him, so that the government would be one of national unity,” he told a news briefing in Baghdad.

The struggle to form a broad-based governing coalition acceptable to all the country’s main ethnic and religious groups has been hampered by sectarian conflict and insurgent violence.

Many of Monday’s attacks targeted the country’s Shiite-led security forces, accused by Sunni Arabs of repeated abuses against them under the cover of fighting the deadly Sunni-driven insurgency. The government denies the accusations.

Bloody attack targets police patrol
The bloodiest attack happened in Baqouba, where a car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded near the mayor’s office and a market, killing six people and injuring 23, including four patrolmen, police said. Piles of charred, twisted wreckage and pools of blood marked the site.

At Baqouba Hospital, relatives of the dead threw their hands in the air and wailed in despair. The mixed Sunni-Shiite city about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad has been at the forefront of a surge of sectarian violence unleashed by the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra.

Bombs, mortar shells and gunfire also rocked the capital, ending a relative lull over the weekend.

Maj. Gen. Mibder Hatim al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim in charge of the Iraqi army’s 6th division, was killed when gunmen fired at his convoy from houses along the route to inspect his troops, Interior Ministry official Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

He died near where a key figure of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party escaped an assassination attempt Thursday. On the same day and in the same part of Baghdad, other attackers shot up cars carrying security men assigned to Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi. The men are from the same tribe but not related.

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